SCIENCE, THE OCCULT, AND THE CONSERVATIVE PROJECT OF LATE
VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN BRITISH MUMMY FICTION
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
BY
MURRAY BUFORD MONTAGUE
Ball State University
Muncie, Indiana
July 2011
2
Acknowledgments
There are numerous people to whom I am greatly indebted in completing this
project. My committee chair, Dr. Patrick Collier, provided expert guidance, offering
numerous suggestions of sources to examine while prodding my thinking with pertinent
questions. He was patient and encouraging throughout the process and always willing to
meet with me whenever I needed help. For this I am truly grateful. Dr. Joyce Huff also
provided excellent comments and sources to investigate, helping me to see possibilities
that I had never considered. Her encouragement, even when the drafts I gave her needed
considerable work, was greatly appreciated. Dr. Kecia McBride was especially beneficial
to me in helping me to see the needs of readers outside my narrow discipline and in
urging me to more graceful expression of my ideas. Dr. James Chesebro‘s comments on
the big picture of my study and its place in academic discourse were a tremendous help to
me. My committee‘s comments have helped make this study more than I could ever have
managed on my own. In addition, I am grateful for the funds provided by the Frances
Mayhew Rippy Graduate Scholarship at Ball State University. Thanks to the provision of
these funds, I was able not only to travel to the Toronto Public Library where the Arthur
Conan Doyle Collection is housed, but to make a trip to the Library of Congress as well,
where I viewed rare silent mummy films.
Last, but not least, I would also like to thank the members of my family for their
support. My father, who passed away a few short months before I had been able to
complete this work, was always encouraging, always interested in what I was doing, a
3
fact for which I am eternally grateful. My mother, one of my chief supporters, also
encouraged me throughout the process, as did my ―other mother,‖ my sister Ann. I also
am grateful for the encouragement of my children, my daughter Elisabeth, and my son
Peter. Most of all, I want to express my thanks to my wife, whose hard work made it
possible for me to go back to school after an absence of many years. I hope she knows
just how much I appreciate what she did for me.
4
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Invasion Fears and the Mummy Narrative. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
The Crisis of Masculinity in Mummy Narratives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Skeptics and Believers in Mummy Detective Fiction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
The Mummy Narrative and the Silent Film. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Appendix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Works Cited. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Introduction
Mummy stories, whatever else they may be, are stories of fantasy, of wonder.
They may well be connected in the minds of many of us as tales of horror, but none can
deny their inhabitance of a place of make-believe, of the unreal. It was this space of
imagination that I most wanted to explore when I began this project. Tales of fantasy,
fairy tales and ghost stories, not mummies, were my first interest. There was something
about these tales that excited me: the magic, the wonder, the space in which another sort
of world opened up to me as a reader. I am undoubtedly not alone in desiring this sense
of another world, a world of magic where ghosts, witches, and wizards roamed the
landscape, for as my study of fantasy in the process of putting together this dissertation
has shown me, such stories were quite popular at the turn of the twentieth century
including, as Peter Keating has noted in his study of the English novel between 1875 and
1914, tales of every sort of supernatural fiction (360-61).
What I was looking for when I began my project was a space in which romance
might reign. Perhaps this is why I felt such sympathy for the complaints of British
writers like Rudyard Kipling, Algernon Blackwood, and Sabine Baring-Gould when they
lamented the loss of a world of primitive imagination where science or a rationalistic
frame of mind had taken away the opportunity for the ordinary human being to believe in
a world where ghosts might wander or where fairies might dance in the moonlight.
6
Kipling‘s Puck of Pook‘s Hill illustrates the point, for in this children‘s tale is the story of
the last fairy still roaming the meadows and woods of Merrie England. Such a tale would
not have been written in an age when such mystical beings were widely accepted.
Science and its attendant rationalism were making it impossible to believe in fairies
anymore, though men and women of the same mind as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might
still try. Adult turn- of- the-century Britons were no longer clapping to keep Tinker Bell
alive. She and her kind were dying out. The rational world would not support them.
Algernon Blackwood blamed Swan Edison, a manufacturer of electric lamps.1
Questioning whether Shakespeare, had he lived in the modern age of electric lights,
would have written tales such as A Midsummer Night‘s Dream, Blackwood draws on
John Masefield‘s Romanes Lecture on ―Shakespeare and the Spiritual Life‖ to show us
what a different world Shakespeare had known..
Shakespeare‘s world was, Blackwood quotes Masefield as saying, ―‗a superstitious
country society‘‖ in which ―‗the land was undrained, the roads unpaved, and the winter
nights unlighted.‘‖ In those days, ―‗from November till March travelling after dark was
almost impossible,‘‖ and people entertained themselves, ―[sitting] by the fire . . ., [telling]
stories of fairies, witches, and ghosts who then made life terrible all over the
countryside.‘‖ It was a dark world, difficult to traverse, superstitious, and sparsely
populated. Superstitions about the ―Night Mare and her ninefold‖ were taken seriously.
The superstition, sparse population, and widely separated churches, Blackwood
1
The company, more properly known as the Edison and Swan United Electric Light Company, was formed
as the result of a merger of Joseph Swan‘s and Thomas Edison‘s electric companies. See Mary E. Swan
and Kenneth R. Swan, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan F.R.S.: Inventor and Scientist, page 90.
7
concludes, created ―the atmosphere that engendered fairies and their delightful brood, an
atmosphere that Swan Edison and Co. have certainly helped to dissipate‖ (―Dreams and
Fairies‖ 175-76). Science and technological progress are making the world a gloomier,
though better lighted, place. Ghosts, witches, and fairies cannot withstand the bright light
of modern electricity. For the imagination to thrive there must be shadows and halflights where men and women can speak quietly to each other before fireplaces.
Illumination, both physical and metaphorical, is the enemy. The world of the imagination
is that world between the real and the imaginary, a liminal place where dreams and
nightmares live.
Sabine Baring-Gould, author, folklorist, and lyricist of that well-known hymn,
―Onward Christian Soldiers,‖ registered a similar complaint in his story of ―The 9.30 UpTrain‖ through the character of the doctor. In response to the protagonist‘s plan to
investigate the haunting of the story, the doctor tells him:
―Take my advice and banish it from your thoughts. When you have come
to the end, you will be sadly disappointed, and will find that all the
mystery evaporates, and leaves a dull, commonplace residuum. It is best
that the few mysteries which remain to us unexplained should still remain
mysteries, or we shall disbelieve in supernatural agencies altogether. We
have searched out the arcana of nature, and exposed all her secrets to the
garish eye of day, and we find, in despair, that the poetry and romance of
life are gone. . . . Believe me, science has done good to mankind, but it
8
has done mischief too. If we wish to be poetical or romantic, we must
shut our eyes to facts. (n. p.)
The problem, the doctor is saying, is that our world has been robbed of much of its
wonder and its beauty by too much knowledge. We need those half-lights for flights of
fancy. Science is cold and barren, a thief of the imagination as it reduces to clinical facts
explanations for everything that makes possible the world of imagination. Science might
be fine for writers of a certain type, such as H.G. Wells, who used such discoveries as a
launch pad into new worlds, but for Baring-Gould and Blackwood, and others like them,
it was the thief of a world quickly receding into the past, a world longed for, but no
longer accessible. Science was the enemy of romance, of imagination; the free play of
fancy required one shut one‘s eyes to fact to be able to experience wonder. Science
might provide information, but it killed romance. Romance, on the other hand, might
feed a desire for wonder, but it denied any pretense to scientific thinking. Science and
romance seemed to be inexorably at odds with one another.
The mummy story stands precisely at this crossroads between science and
romance, but rather than asking its readers to simply give up all pretence to scientific
rationality, it provides a means of catering to this desire to be rational by an insertion of
scientists, archaeologists, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals who set the
imprimatur of science upon the whole fictional enterprise, thereby making room for the
pleasure of the fantastical tales that the stories offer. In so doing, the stories create a
unique space—a kind of laboratory even—where the problems of an increasingly
mundane world may be investigated and solutions tried out in a controlled environment.
9
These world problems revolve chiefly around three issues in the study that
follows: matters that are concerned with invasion, gender, and expertise. At the center of
these issues is the fear of chaos. The chapter on invasion stories looks at the chaos that
results from the feared dissolution of empire. Chaotic relationships between men and
women are the subject of the chapter on gender. And the chapter on detective fiction is
all about how order is brought to the mass of clues by the expert detective. Within the
framework of each chapter is a dyad of an opposing principle of chaos and rationality, the
main goal of each story being to restore balance in a world gone awry. If the societal
upset is invasion, the warring parties must cease hostilities when one side or the other
wins; if the problem is a world where gender roles are out of order, ideas about those
roles must be resolved, ordinarily by putting the woman back into her place, though
oftentimes allowing her some greater degree of freedom than before; if the problem is
some kind of mysterious disturbance, then the mystery must be resolved, typically
through the expertise of a detective or other professional. The resolution of each of these
difficulties puts matters right once again, ordinarily leaving them in the politically
conservative world that had existed before the upset, so that the empire rules once again
and women and men resume their positions and unexplained occult phenomena are
explained and troublesome phenomena concluded.2 Expertise plays a role in many of
2
Though many of the tales which I examine in these stories do in fact reach solutions as I have described
above, at least one does not: the 1903 edition of Bram Stoker‘s The Jewel of Seven Stars. In this version
of the story, the unmanageable Queen Tera, the mummy of the story, destroys everyone seeking to resurrect
her except for the narrator. The 1912 edition of the story, possibly by another hand than Stoker‘s, however,
neatly wraps up the problem when Tera and her modern day double, Margaret Trelawny, merge and marry
the story‘s narrator. The double-edged working out of the difficulty is reminiscent of what Fred Botting
10
these stories, sometimes on the side of good, sometimes not. Experts bring about
solutions to matters disrupting world peace in the invasion chapter and expert detectives,
knowing how to read clues, solve and contain mysteries. Experts, moreover, reassert
male dominance in a world dominated by a female intuition more in touch with the
seeming irrationality of the occult by applying rationally trained intellects to meet the
demands of occult phenomena. In this way, rationality and expertise come together to
bring about the resolution in these tales.
The stories that I will be discussing in this study are, in their totality, few in
number. Nicholas Daly reckons them at no ―more than a dozen,‖ though, if one were to
include any mention of mummies, the number would go significantly higher (25). The
tales that I have included, however, are those stories where the mummy plays a
significant part. In some cases that means that we are talking about a dangerous mummy
attacking those with whom it comes in contact, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s ―Lot
No. 249‖; in other cases, we are talking about stories where a mummy is resurrected and
then becomes a sympathetic character (e.g., Mrs. H. D. Everett‘s Iras, a Mystery or
George Griffith‘s The Romance of Golden Star). I have excluded those tales, such as H.
Rider Haggard‘s She, however, where a mummy may be present but does not play any
role of real significance, for to do so would result in an alarmingly high number of socalled mummy tales. All of this means that by the time I have made my selections, I have
a group of tales ranging from as early as 1878 to as late as 1912 that I have examined in
says of gothic literature‘s ambivalent nature, which attempts on the one hand to restore the order it disturbs,
but at the same time contests the very rules that ensure social stability (6-7).
11
coming to my conclusions, though, as will become apparent, my actual discussion of tales
is an even smaller number.3
The stories that I will be looking at can be classified in several ways: as gothic
fiction, as tales of reverse colonization, as invasion stories, mystery stories, love stories,
and even as comic tales. At their most basic, of course, is their classification as gothic
narratives. Gothic fiction is typically of two types—the explained and the unexplained.
The explained gothic is that sort of story in which Ann Radcliff excelled: a seemingly
supernatural set of events occur in the progress of the narrative only to be eventually
explained away by some perfectly natural explanation, such as robbers making their
hideout in some out-of –the-way place and being mistaken for ghosts. For cartoon
enthusiasts, this is the kind of explanation that worked in weekly episodes of ScoobyDoo. The unexplained gothic is of another sort. In these stories there is no rational
explanation; ghosts or other spirits are the only explanation. The supernatural in these
stories is real. A third sort of gothic tale, with its own subset of divisions, is also
possible. This is the sort of tale that Tzevtan Todorov calls ―the fantastic‖ (41).. In these
stories we find ourselves in a place of indecision (―the fantastic‖) where we cannot make
up our minds about the phenomena we have seen: they might be caused by real
supernatural agents, or they might be mere illusions with rational explanations. When in
this state of indecision, we are in the ―fantastic.‖ Once we make a decision about the
nature of the tale, whether it can be explained or not, then the fantastic ceases to exist; it
is, in other words, an evanescent form that lasts only as long as our doubt (Todorov 41).
3
See appendix for a list of all the stories examined.
12
If we decide the events of the story can be understood through rational explanation, we
call the tale ―uncanny.‖ If not, it is a ―marvelous‖ tale, a tale, that is, of the pure
supernatural, where events can only be accounted for by making allowance for the
existence of the supernatural. This does not mean, however, that the stories cannot fall
somewhere in between these two extremes. In fact, according to Todorov‘s scheme,
some tales fall into a ―sub-genre . . . between the fantastic and the uncanny on the one
hand, [and] between the fantastic and the marvelous on the other. These sub-genres
include works that sustain the hesitation characteristic of the true fantastic for a long
period, but . . . ultimately end in the marvelous or the uncanny‖ (44). Stories of the first
sort Todorov calls ―fantastic-uncanny,‖ those of the second he calls ―fantasticmarvelous‖ (44). Mummy tales of the fin de siècle may be placed in various positions
along this continuum, some leaning more toward one end of the continuum or the other.
Their position on this continuum suggests something about the degree to which the
writers of these were willing to commit to the idea of the supernatural. What it all boils
down to is a matter of rationality and how we see ourselves, whether we are going to be
rational men and women of science or whether we are going to embrace the irrational and
the savage in our nature.
Though they were gothic, the stories that were written back in those days, would
probably surprise most of us whose image of mummy fiction has been gathered from our
familiarity with the mummy monsters created by Hollywood, where slow moving,
heavily bandaged figures stalk their intended victims with arms outstretched. The early
stories of mummies were nothing like that. Instead, the stories were much more likely to
13
be love stories than anything else, the typical tale running something along the lines of a
male archaeologist coming into contact with a beautiful mummified woman with whom
he immediately falls in love. This love story might be told in comic form, as in Grant
Allen‘s story of ―My New Year‘s Eve Among the Mummies,‖ where the narrator tells a
tale of his having stumbled upon a party of wakened Egyptian mummies one evening
when in Egypt, or they may be more dramatic love stories where a serious tone is
maintained throughout. Horror may intrude on occasion in these tales, but by and large
horror does not overwhelm the love story.4 This sort of story, of course, is gothic too—
the gothic romance being a standard—but the tales are nothing like what most of us
growing up with mummy films emphasizing horror were likely to expect.5
There is, nevertheless, one thing that will not surprise most of us looking at the
subject—the quality of the tales. By and large, the stories are hardly what one would call
fine works of literature. They are low-brow fiction, light reading, and almost certainly
destined to be forgotten by the vast majority of readers. This does not mean, however,
that they are without value, for, though lowbrow fiction, they served, in their time at
least, an important function, for as Sally Mitchell has pointed out in another context,
4
The one exception to this pattern is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s tale of ―Lot No. 249.‖ In this tale the
mummy is a figure of horror, not of romance. The one potentially romantic situation in the whole story, the
engagement of Edward Bellingham to Monkhouse Lee‘s sister, is treated not as a love story but a tale of
horror from which Lee‘s sister must be rescued before she commits herself to Bellingham in marriage.
5
Mummy films of the twentieth century, of course, included the love story as a standard part of its
repertoire. The difference that I am arguing here is that many of the tales were more concerned with the
love story than with horror. These written—as opposed to filmed—stories from the last quarter of the
nineteenth-century to the period just prior to the First World War focused on the love story often to the
exclusion, or near exclusion, of the element of horror. Théophile Gautier‘s ―Le Pied de momie‖ (1840;
translated by Lafcadio Hearn in 1908) is an early example of this kind of story. There is the element of the
supernatural, but the focus is on the love story—and comedy—rather than horror.
14
popular fiction gets to be popular not only because it ―draws on the values, interests, and
concerns of a specific group of readers at a particular time,‖ but because it meet[s] . . .
[the] psychological needs‖ of readers who choose to read it (4--5). Unlike serious
literature, which, according to Ken Gelder, is defined by a desirable complexity that
makes great demands on the reader, changing that reader‘s life and doing so all the while
in a way unconcerned with the marketplace, popular fiction is all about, in R. L.
Stevenson‘s words, ―simplification‖ (19; 35). It is, Gelder continues, a plot-driven form
of fiction, consumed quickly, and escapist in nature (19). It could, at the same time, in
romances such as those written by H. Rider Haggard, provide something that tales of
naturalism could not—a sense of the ―enduring human spirit‖ (Bristow 117). Perhaps
most important of all, popular fiction can, in Tony Bennett‘s words, ―help to define our
sense of ourselves, shaping our desires, fantasies, imagined pasts and projected futures‖
(ix). Mummy stories do all of these things as they work out the problems and desires of
the age: problems of empire, its justice, and how it can be—if it should be—maintained;
concerns about an encroaching femininity, where men seem to be the losers in a zero-sum
game as women become ever more powerful; and worries about knowledge and truth,
about science and the occult, and how one can know the truth and the role of expertise in
that conquest. In the pages that follow in this study, I take a New Historical approach
that puts mummy fiction in dialogue with the various dialogues which express these
anxieties, for, despite mummy fiction‘s occasional forays into foreign climes, the events
of mummy fiction mostly take place in England and are more about England and the
English than they are about anything else.
15
The period in which mummy fiction was written was an age when science ruled
supreme and those who lived in it considered it an ―age of skepticism‖ (Sheridan 34).6 It
was also a time, as has been frequently documented, when many, in response to scientific
discoveries found themselves unable to maintain the faith of their youth and turned
instead to science for answers, in essence turning scientists into figures of authority rather
than priests. But it was also a time when members of every class began to take an
interest in the occult impelled in part by the very success of the scientific positivism
(Brantlinger 228). Men and women, wanting something more in their lives than a world
of scientific materialism, as Janet Oppenheim suggests in her study of The Other World,
took to attending séances and conducting all kinds of experiments into the occult. Some,
such as the Society for Psychic Research, even went so far as to form organizations to
investigate psychic phenomena. This interest took hold in fiction as well. Stories that
fed the reader‘s desire for a world of ghosts, fairies, and fantasy were very popular as the
period‘s designation as the golden age of the ghost story and of the children‘s story
attests. It was also a period in which tales of threatening monsters, such as Richard
Marsh‘s The Beetle and Bram Stoker‘s Dracula, appeared. Thus, it need hardly surprise
us today that such fiction as tales of risen mummies offer might well appeal to readers of
the day.
6
A recent article by David Gange, ―Religion and Science in Late Nineteenth-Century British Egyptology,‖
however, makes a compelling argument for the role played by orthodox religion in Egyptology. In this
article, he argues that many Egyptologists became involved in the study of ancient Egypt in order to prove
the historical accuracy of ―Old Testament history‖ (1084). Thus, he argues, the ―development in
archaeology and Egyptology in the last decades of the century . . . . were often developed to fulfil [sic]
roles that today seem remarkably unscientific, relating primarily to spiritual issues‖ (1084).
16
Within this atmosphere of combined rationalism and longing for mystery arose a
vogue in England for Egypt fueled not only by new archaeological discoveries and
political and economic necessity for markets, but by Egypt‘s reputation as a land of
mystical religious knowledge (Hornung 55). The nineteenth century had been a time of
change and discovery in Egypt. Napoleon‘s invasion of the nation in 1798 had brought,
in its wake, numerous scholars to investigate and catalogue the wonders that were being
continually discovered. Nearly a century later, Sir Gaston Masparo and Emile Brugsch
Bey had, in 1881, excited considerable interest in their discovery of a ―cache of
mummified kings‖ and the interest was intensified when Masparo unwrapped several of
the mummies before a live audience (Pearson 220).
The political situation, moreover,
was bringing Egypt ever more into the attention of Britons at home, especially with the
building of the Suez Canal in 1869, which made the nation of increasing importance to
the British Empire since it required access to the canal in order to conduct its business
more profitably around the globe. And interest only increased once the British
government stepped in unofficially to administer the Egyptian government, thus making
of Egypt an extension of the homeland. Added to this, Egypt‘s reputation as a land of
mystical religious knowledge meant that many of those seeking unorthodox religious
fulfillment might well choose to visit its ancient pyramids and cities or at the very least to
look into books that might help them better understand this ancient land and its beliefs.
Egypt had, according to Erik Hornung, been regarded as a ―land of magic‖ since the days
of the Old Testament, and it is represented in the Quran as a ―land of powerful sorcerers‖
(61). It was moreover, Hornung continues, thought that Egypt had once been privy to a
17
lost advanced science that had been preserved in the pyramids. Edmé-François Jomard,
author of the chapter on the Memphis pyramids ―for Napoleon‘s Description de
l‘Egypte,‖ believed that the pyramids contained scientific knowledge from ancient Egypt
as did eighteenth century Freemason ―‗Count‘ Cagliostro‖ (161). Bram Stoker has his
character Abel Trelawny express the same idea of advanced scientific knowledge in The
Jewel of Seven Stars. Acoustics, hypnotism, and astronomy, Trelawny argues, were all
part of ancient Egyptian scientific knowledge, and raising Tera, the story‘s mummy, will
make remarkable advances in science possible (144). The combination of occult and
scientific knowledge as was thought to exist in Egypt, as expressed both in fiction and
non-fiction, would have been a heady brew for anyone hungry for a spiritual dimension
to a world in which science reigned supreme. The literary marketplace, considering all of
these interests—archaeological, political, psychic—took this interest into account and
provided for it. Reports on the Masparo and Brugsch Bey archaeological discovery
provided plenty of fodder for the papers for more than a year, and when combined with
news on the British military operations in Egypt the following year, the result was an
almost daily coverage of events in Egypt (Pearson 220). ―Interest in Egyptology,‖
Pearson adds, ―continued to grow throughout the 1880s‖ and books and articles by
scholars and popular writers alike were published. In September 1886 Blackwood‘s
Magazine published H. Rider Haggard‘s friend and co-author of The World‘s Desire
Andrew Lang‘s ―Egyptian Divine Myths,‖ and Edward Wilson came out with a report on
the Brugsch Bey and Masparo discovery in an article titled ―Finding Pharaoh,‖ which
was published in The Century Magazine in May 1887. That same year, a book by
18
Samuel Manning, The Land of the Pharaohs came out, followed six years later by
Egyptologist Ernest A. Wallis Budge‘s study of The Mummy: Chapters on Egyptian
Funereal Archaeology (220).
Mummies in particular were interesting to many back home in England; and the
practice of unwrapping them in the 1820s and 30s, first in more intimate settings for an
all-male audience and later in larger, mixed company, must surely have contributed to a
greater interest in ancient Egypt and undoubtedly inspired the imaginations of those
creating tales of mummies rising from the dead (Pearce 71).7 These mummy
unwrappings brought Egypt and the mummy to the British Isles. Though most Britons
would not have been able to visit Egypt for themselves, many, Susan Pearce explains,
would have been able to attend the public unwrappings of mummies such as those
conducted by Thomas Pettigrew, who conducted a very well attended event on 16
January 1834 in the theater at the Royal College of Surgeons. Summarizing the diary of
William Clift, Hunterian Museum conservator at the Royal College of Surgeons between
1793 and 1844, Pearce notes that not only was the event was well attended, but it
included in its audience ―a prince, several lords and bishops, (ex)members of the
government and parliament, leading doctors, military and naval officers, and men of the
arts,‖ noting as well that ―neither the Archbishop of Canterbury nor the Bishop of
London could find places‖ (60). By the latter part of the century, the practice of publicly
7
Though there was some interest in curses in one or two of the stories published in the later nineteenth and
early twentieth century, there seems to have been very little concern about the matter before the First World
War. That concern did not make itself known until the discovery of Tut, when the topic provided fodder
for newspaper articles, with Marie Corelli and Doyle affirming their belief in such things (Stephens 12).
19
unwrapping mummies would have largely been discontinued, but undoubtedly the vogue
for such events would have lived on in historical memory, forever uniting Egypt and
mummies for many British subjects.
The world we are looking at in the period of this study was a world which was
seeing great changes, many of them troubling. Besides the alteration in the attitudes of
many regarding religious faith, there were matters of changes in the roles that men and
women ought to play in society and concerns about national security brought on, in part
by changing political and economic conditions that found England‘s position slipping
from what it had been earlier in the century and in part by a perceived decline in the
British racial stock.8 Everything was in flux. It was a disturbing time and one in which
the very fabric of society seemed in jeopardy. Stability was everywhere threatened.
The stability of which I speak is threatened in several ways in the stories, which
try out the problems within their pages, seeing whether they can solve them. One way
stability is threatened can be seen in those stories that deal with stories of invasion. The
invasion story, alternately known as an invasion-scare tale or a story of future war, is a
kind of story that depicts a predicted invasion of the homeland. Ordinarily, these stories,
as becomes clear from a perusal of the work of I.F. Clarke, probably the premiere critic
of the genre, involves threats of one major power attacking another. There are
exceptions, such as H.G. Wells‘s tale of The War of the Worlds where the perceived
threat from other real-world powers is transformed into invaders from outer space, but
8
For further information on each of these issues, see the chapter on invasion (―Invasion Fears and the
Mummy Narrative‖) and the chapter on gender (―The Crisis of Masculinity in Mummy Narratives) in this
study.
20
ordinarily English invasion stories see their threats more likely as coming from France,
Germany, or Russia. The invaders in mummy invasion tales, however, are more exotic
than the typical tale, for in these stories, the invaders are, or are assisted by, living
mummies. These are stories of reverse colonization with a metaphysical twist, for these
tales are often powered by the supernatural.9 They are, like the much-cited Dracula, tales
of reverse colonization, where, as Patrick Brantlinger points out, ―the outward movement
of imperialist adventure is reversed‖ (233).
The problem underlying these stories, I would argue, involves a conflicted sense
about the whole enterprise of empire. Many Britons were concerned about the influx of
foreigners into their island nation and were concerned about the potential risk to national
security these individuals might pose. Managing the problem, therefore, became of
paramount importance, a goal, that according to Nicholas Daly and David Seed, was
accomplished by the reification of other cultures and their subsequent classification into
manageable units. They each approached this matter through relying on two different
sources: Daly, relying on a chapter from Karl Marx‘s Das Capital, ―The Commodity
Fetish and Its Secret,‖ and Seed, on a book by Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The
Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World Fairs, 1851-1939. The
commonality between these two sources is the idea of human beings being turned into
objects. Greenhalgh‘s book argues that dependent nations within the British Empire at
9
The fact of the supernatural nature of these stories is enough for Stephen D. Arata in his discussion of
―The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization,‖ to discount these tales as
invasion stories. Invasion narratives typically are between mortal powers alone. Wildly imaginative
advanced weaponry might be present, but the supernatural is ordinarily not included. I would nevertheless
consider these stories both tales of invasion as well as stories of reverse colonization. The supernatural
aspect, I would argue, is simply another take on the invasion narrative genre.
21
the Great Exhibition of 1851 were turned into nothing more than their produce; Daly,
arguing from Marx, argues the obverse: rather than human beings being turned into
objects, objects are turned into something with human-like agency. Managing such
objects can thus be seen as the equivalent of managing nations, the objects themselves
representing the nations which created them. Egypt, for instance, thus becomes cotton
and managing cotton means managing Egypt. The British Empire, ever needful of raw
materials and goods from its colonies, if it is to survive must thus manage the labor of its
colonies and of its people. Mummies, as Susan Pearce points out, were part of this same
process. They were ―torn from their tombs, . . . deprived of their substance, . . . . robbed
of their own life stories written on their coffins,‖ and ―turned by exhibition into a carnival
for London audiences‖ (55). They were human beings become objects. The difficulty
came when those objects, as Daly tells us, took on a life of their own (36). Restoration of
order meant restoration of the object status of the mummy, a movement, that is from
object, to subject, to object once more.
Daly takes this idea a step further by arguing that mummies were a part of a
circulation of foreign commodities which needed expert management. The world of latenineteenth-century England, Daly tells us, was a world in which the economy was
moving from a production-based to a consumption-based economy and one in which the
goods that were consumed were produced all over the British Empire. To manage this
influx of goods, individuals had to become experts of a sort. Housewives had to learn
how to arrange and care for the many different objects that had been brought into their
museum-like homes, and museum curators had to perform the same function for the
22
nation, labeling and arranging the various items in their collection. Failure to manage the
ever-growing collection of objects and nations could potentially mean being
overwhelmed by them. Collecting and labeling, Daly argues, is a way to control them.
The problem, Daly continues, was similar to that met with in mummy fiction. The
danger of both the uncollected artifact and the reanimated mummy were the same.
Unsupervised, both could run amok. But the mummy story offers reassurance to the
anxious reader, Daly suggests, because in the changes of the mummy‘s status from object
to subject and back to object, a process helped by expert knowledge and classification,
the stories suggest the essential solidity of the British Empire.
Daly‘s analysis is excellent as far as it goes and is true to a great extent.
Expertise, for example, is certainly depicted as important in numerous mummy stories.
Individuals troubled by mummies in these tales must frequently rely upon experts like
Flaxman Low or Dr. John Silence or others to deal with the problems the mummies
cause, but this use of mummies is much more applicable to those stories where mummies
are viewed as frightening beings rather than as objects of love. Mummies, when
embodiments of horror, require expert management if such troublesome creatures are to
be put back in their place; but when the revivified mummy is the recipient of love, no
such management is required; such management, may in fact, hurt more than it helps.10
10
There is, of course, the possibility of problems associated with sexual license and interracial love, which
the tales handled in a couple of different ways. The problem of interracial love was often evaded by
depicting ancient Egyptians as being in appearance more like northern Europeans, often with blonde hair
and fair skin. Accompanying illustrations often depicted the love-interests in these tales in this manner.
Sexual license was handled more through avoidance in a technique which David Seed calls ―arousal and
denial‖ (191). The way this typically works is that a man falls in love with (is aroused by) a female
mummy only to be ultimately denied any sexual contact. The denial may be harmless, as in the case where
23
Daly‘s analysis, moreover, ignores those stories which do not leave the reader with an
assurance of the stability of the empire. True enough, the majority of stories do manage
such a resolution, but a tale like George Griffith‘s The Romance of Golden Star, where a
resurrected mummy re-takes his kingdom from its South American colonizers suggests
that Britain herself might well be in danger of reverse colonization and should prepare for
such a possibility.
The problem with empire is further compounded by the perceived problem of the
racial stock of those defending the nation. The Boer War debacle had proved an
embarrassment for the nation and the recruitment effort had suggested a less than robust
health among young men of military age. H. Rider Haggard blamed urban conditions and
poor diet (Rural England 541; 568). Whatever the cause, however, degeneration was of
great concern. German Max Nordau devoted an entire book to the subject, and in England
it was frequently a topic of conversation in the newspapers.11 Mummy stories treated the
concern as well as they tried to come to terms with the issue. In invasion fiction, we see
examples of both weak and strong male characters, the latter, I would suggest as a
remedy to the former. Cyril Forrester, the protagonist of Pharos, the Egyptian, though a
strong male character throughout much of the book, is infected with a disease of some
sort which weakens him and by the end of the book he must be rescued by the woman he
Ebenezer Smith, in ―Smith and the Pharaohs,‖ is denied the woman he loves as she disappears from this
world, or it may be horrific, as it is when Prince Oscar Oscarovitch, in The Mummy and Miss Nitocris, is
denied the woman he lusts after when she is replaced by a corpse.
11
The pages of the London Times provide numerous examples of this concern in reports on activities of the
Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration as well as letters to the editor expressing concern
about the problem.
24
loves, Valerie de Vocxqal; and the man who raises Vilcaroya from the dead in The
Romance of Golden Star, Dr. Laurens Djama, becomes hysterical by the end of the novel.
Stronger characters, however, such as Professor Franklin Marmion and Captain Francis
Hartness, offer readers some assurance, suggesting, as Daly has previously argued, the
solidity of the empire.
This concern in the stories about a failing racial stock is strongly related to
matters of a failing masculinity faced with powerful women that the traditional male does
not know how to manage. Typically men (and housewives acting as curators of foreign
objects in their own homes, as we have seen in Daly) manage these foreign objects
through classification, putting objects in their proper place. The New Woman, however,
stepped outside the bounds of traditional female roles and confounded traditional men
and women. What was to be done with her? How was she to be managed? Lisa Hopkins
in her essay, ―Crowning the King, Mourning His Mother: The Jewel of Seven Stars and
The Lady of the Shroud‖ addresses this question, remarking on means that Stoker uses in
Dracula, Jewel, and The Lady of the Shroud. The problem, as Hopkins sees it, is what
she refers to as the ―horror of motherhood,‖ a horror where, as Jeffrey Spears notes, the
individual man finds himself fearful of a dangerous mother who threatens to ―[reabsorb]‖
him into the womb (qtd. in Hopkins 147). This is the point that is especially pertinent to
my own study, for the threatened reabsorption, the thing that makes women a threat, is
the very thing that places women in a position of agency, for it is through this
reabsorption that women can once again assert their power over men. The womb, that is,
becomes the equivalent of the hungry mouth, seeking to consume and thereby manage the
25
male of the species. Stoker manages this threat, Hopkins argues, by putting women back
into their place, either by killing them off in his stories or by writing them into
submission. The danger of not doing so can be seen in the 1903 edition of Jewel, the
solution in the 1912 edition where the mummy Tera is subsumed under the character of
Margaret and married to Malcolm Ross. Such matrimonial solutions are quite often used
in the tales. Powerful women in their own right in these stories frequently surrender their
power to the man they love: besides Tera, who, subsumed under the person of Margaret,
marries Ross, there are, among others, Niti Marmion, a woman of great psychic power
who joyously places herself in submission to the man she loves, Mark Merrill; as well as
the Incan queen, Golden Star, who gives herself to Captain Francis Hartness. By
presenting the relationships between men and women in this manner, the authors of these
stories manage to elevate their male characters‘ standing, taking the women down a notch
in the process.
This management of women is especially important, as the stories demonstrate,
because uncontrolled, women‘s sexuality threatens men. If one accepts the idea of
women as primitive sorceresses, as Lyn Pykett argues New Woman novelist Mary
Chavelita Dunne Bright (pen name George Egerton) does, this sense of threat is hardly
surprising (166). Women, according to this view, are ideologically aligned with the
primitive, the savage, the irrational (Pykett 155). They are, moreover, mysterious and
mystifying to rational man, who, with Freud, might well be tempted to consider them the
―dark continent‖ (Freud, Question 38). Because of their sexual attractiveness, women are
able to lure men into situations that may well prove dangerous to them. At the very least,
26
they may simply find their rational powers diminished, as Andrew Smith argues in
―Love, Freud, and the Female Gothic,‖ or, more seriously, they may be threatened with
death as a result of seduction in the process of ―arousal and denial‖ of which Seed speaks
(Smith 82; Seed 191). Such women, in gothic ideology, are dark beings, difficult to
fathom, bearers of secrets.
The fearful possibilities of women as expressed in these stories have much in
common with the nineteenth century attempts to manage women in general. Women,
children, and homosexuals among others were placed under surveillance, Foucault tells
us, as a means of managing sexuality. Operating much along the same lines as the
medieval confessional, the subject suffering from some particular sexual malady, would
tell her story to the doctor-confessor, who would record and analyze what she had said
and through a linguistic process ultimately bring the subject to a state closer to that which
was considered normal. The stories effect their cures in a similar way through language.
Though there is no talking cure undertaken in these tales, the stories (or their authors)
bring about a cure either through a classification system that places the aberrant female in
her proper place (a marriage in which she submits to her husband) or else through the
most drastic solution of all, authorial destruction. In either case, women, with the
exception of Stoker‘s 1903 edition of Jewel, are restored to their proper place where they
can no longer threaten men.
The picture that emerges in much of the criticism of mummy fiction, then, is one
where women are powerful beings that men have come to fear. Some attention is given
to how women are to be managed: Hopkins suggests, as we have seen, that Stoker
27
manages them by killing them off or marrying them to one of his other characters; and
Smith, suggests that, for Stoker at least, the problem with managing women is that they
―cannot be properly objectified,‖ they cannot, that is, be made into objects which can be
managed through classification (86). But little attention has been paid to the way that the
stories seek to rehabilitate the position of men in the stories. This is an area that I seek to
address as I combine ideas of a failing racial stock with the idea of a weakened
masculinity.12 Both, it seems to me, are part of the same source. Mummy stories, as an
ordinarily conservative genre, helps set things right, which I demonstrate in the following
study.
One last area remains to be investigated—the role of conflicting epistemologies as
they are portrayed in mummy detective fiction. The critics of mummy fiction, though
they have dealt with at least one story of mummy detective fiction quite frequently (i.e.,
The Jewel of Seven Stars) have not approached the study of epistemology by way of
detective stories. For studies that look at issues of epistemology, I am primarily indebted
to those critics in detective fiction, like Peter Hühn and Glenn W. Most, who are
particularly interested in the way that detectives must read the signs of evidence that are,
in Hühn‘s phrase, ―imprinted ‗on the world‘‖ (454). David Glover, however, is the one
critic to whom I am most indebted with regard to the idea of the conflict between science
and the occult in mummy fiction. Glover looks at the role of science in particular in his
12
In a similar vein, Patrick Brantlinger notes the dwindling opportunities for adventure for men of this
period. The blank spaces on the map that had provided earlier generations with opportunities for
adventure, by this time were all being filled in. Chances for manly adventure were dwindling. See
Brantlinger, page 238-39.
28
study of ―Bram Stoker and the Crisis of the Liberal Subject,‖ where he points out the
unfortunate result of scientific discoveries, particularly those by the psychologist W. B.
Carpenter, which have led to a reevaluation of just what it means to be an individual,
especially in terms of one‘s will. According to Carpenter, individuals possess both an
independent will over which they have some control, yet at the same time are moved to
act and think in certain ways as a result of physiological factors (993). The frightening
part of what Carpenter had said was that part about being controlled by physiological
factors, for this meant that a human being might not be absolutely in control of his will
and thus that things outside our conscious control might control us. This would have
been an especially frightening idea for men in a society where a man‘s masculinity was
judged in part by his self control. Such a belief could easily lead to the fear of being
controlled by outside forces, which it did in mummy fiction, where villains with hypnotic
powers force men and women to do their bidding, placing them in a position which
Victoria Margree compares to ―a sort of (mental) rape‖ (67). In such cases, those men
and women who have been hypnotized are completely out of control of their own actions.
This leaves them as nothing more than automatons, lacking the very thing that makes
them human (Glover, ―Crisis‖ 994).
Glover is also important in terms of my study for what he suggests about the
conflicting roles of science and the occult in The Jewel of Seven Stars, which he deals
with in his study of ―The Lure of the Mummy: Science, Séances and Egyptian Tales in
Fin de siècle England.‖ Glover argues that the story ―remains deeply divided against
itself, caught between the competing attractions of ancient and modern knowledges,
29
unable to achieve the forward-looking vision [of a world where science and the occult are
joined]‖ (7). Glover has a point, of course. Despite Abel Trelawny‘s best efforts to
resurrect Tera and learn from her, thereby giving the world access to ancient Egyptian
knowledge, he is ultimately unable to pull it off. At the same time, however, the mere
joining of these two sources of knowledge provided readers of the fin de siècle with a
means of replacing a lost world of the supernatural that so many had experienced as a
result of scientific advances since Darwin. I would, moreover, argue that despite this
division, the story nevertheless manages to unite science and the occult. Even more
important, I would argue, the combination of the two competing epistemologies of
science and the occult actually work together not only in Jewel, but in the majority of the
stories of mummy fiction, where science and the occult come together in expert figures
like Flaxman Low or Dr. John Silence who place a scientific imprimatur upon the whole
enterprise, allowing readers to enjoy supernatural fiction alongside the comfortable idea
of scientific evidence and expert control.
The chapters that follow are concerned with all of these issues: with the
xenophobic fear of invasion, of failing racial stock, with a compromised masculinity, and
with conflicting ways of knowledge. The first of these chapters, chapter two, looks at the
conflicted views of empire for those Britons living during the fin de siècle, trying out
how we might view empire. The questions of a weakened racial stock and the fears of an
England weakened by an overweening dependence upon its colonies is explored here as
are the various attitudes about the exploitation of the colonies in a time of the Empire‘s
greatest strength. The result of the exploration of these tales, however, is not a full-
30
fledged confidence in the justice of empire, but a conglomeration of attitudes, some
reassuring to the jingoistic Briton, while others are clearly disturbing.
The following chapter, chapter three, looks at a related problem, the problem of a
weakened masculinity. In this chapter I argue that the stories of the period are very much
concerned with a weakening male population much concerned about the New Woman
and her increasing power in relation to the male. These stories, conservative for the most
part in their intent, explore, and when possible, rescue, that failing masculinity by
domesticating overly powerful women through marriage or other means and raising the
common lot of masculinity through the portrayal of strong male characters who are a
match for their women. Characters in the stories who are not able to rise in such a
manner serve as a kind of warning to the discerning reader.
Chapter four, the penultimate chapter, looks at the issue of the conflicting
epistemologies of science and the occult. In this chapter, I examine the ways that expert
detectives, whom I describe as readers, are able to interpret the signs left at the site of the
crime to determine what has occurred. Drawing on reading theory by theorists involved
in second language acquisition, I point out how these detectives are able to reach the
proper conclusions as a result of their expert status, noting as well how they have taken
what has typically been a woman‘s domain and turned it into a masculine discourse. The
result of the competing epistemologies, I argue, is the erection of a space where those
interested in the supernatural may once again experience an area that had been taken from
many by science.
31
I conclude my study with a look forward at the development of the mummy story
in film. Drawing on my examination of mummy films from the 1890s until the First
World War at the Library of Congress, I look at how the mummy story evolved from the
typically less horrific love story of the print world to a form emphasizing more horrific
stories as filmmakers tried out the genre in a visual format. I use this transitional period
as a point from which to look back at the mummy story and pull together a sense of what
the mummy story of the fin de siècle means for readers today.
The study of mummy fiction of the fin de siècle has not attracted much attention
over the years, the interest in the tales being more invested in the films of the twentieth
century instead. Yet, as Tony Bennett has argued about popular fiction, they are valuable
because they aid us in ―defin[ing] our sense of ourselves‖ (ix). As barometers of public
life, moreover, they provide invaluable insight into the lives of the people for whom they
were written. They are, I would argue, a subject well worth studying.
Invasion Fears and the Mummy Narrative
Let us begin with three stories, all about invasion in one way or another. They
were all published between 1897 and somewhere around 1906 (the date of the last book
being uncertain) and their stories all take place in the same general period in which they
were published. The first is George Griffith‘s tale of The Romance of Golden Star
(1897), which purports to tell how the resurrected mummy of an Incan emperor named
Vilcaroya takes back his kingdom from the descendants of the Spanish colonizers who
stole it from him nearly four hundred years prior to his resurrection. Dr. Laurens Djama,
a brilliant but ultimately traitorous character, through his unorthodox scientific studies,
brings Vilcaroya back to life, while Djama‘s sister, Ruth, looks after the resurrected king
him and helps him to adjust to the strange modern world in which he lives. Captain
Francis Hartness, like Djama and his sister Ruth an Englishman, serves as Vilcaroya‘s
military advisor and friend, acquainting him with modern warfare and its technology. As
for his army, it is made up from the loyal descendants of his people from his kingdom all
those many years ago. He recruits them, persuading them both with a sense of the justice
of his cause and the riches of Incan treasure in his possession. By the time he is finished,
Vilcaroya has punished the traitorous Djama, married Ruth, and retaken the country,
destroying its foreign institutions and reestablishing the Incan way of life.
33
Just a year later, in 1898, another tale of invasion is published, Guy Boothby‘s
Pharos, the Egyptian. Unlike Griffith‘s story, this narrative makes no use of an invading
army, but instead tells the tale of how one man, an Egyptian named Pharos, manages
through his occult powers and knowledge of science, to strike down thousands upon
thousands of victims on the Continent and in England in retaliation for the despoliation of
Egyptian tombs. Pharos, who is inexplicably both a mummy who remains entombed in
his sarcophagus and a living, breathing, hideous old man, manages to accomplish this feat
through his powers of mind control over others and through an elixir of death; he uses
this elixir on the tale‘s narrator and protagonist, Cyril Forrester, a celebrated British artist,
whom he then uses to spread disease as he travels from Egypt, thence to various
European nations, and finally to England itself. Once back in England, Pharos takes
Forrester on a tour of London, showing him not only those places frequented by the
socially elite but to locations known only to the criminal element. The result of this little
tour, of course, is that London is soon decimated by disease, death, and chaos. By story‘s
end, however, order is restored when the very gods who sent Pharos destroy him and all
is well for the nation, though Forrester, having learned of his unwitting role in the deaths
of so many, permanently exiles himself from his native land.
A third tale, this one also by Griffith, tells a similar story to that written by
Boothby. In this tale, The Mummy and Miss Nitocris: A Phantasy of the Fourth
Dimension (1906?), the enemy is once again found chiefly in one person, a man named
Prince Oscar Oscarovitch, who uses his wealth and influence to gather those around him
who will help him gain power. The mummy of the story, Queen Nitocris, does not play a
34
major role in this tale, though it is a crucial one, for at the beginning of the story, it is
Queen Nitocris who contacts Professor Franklin Marmion, ―one of the most celebrated
mathematicians and physicists in Europe,‖ (n.p.) through a fourth dimension where time
and space can easily be traversed, and equips him through this same fourth dimension to
stop a world war. With the help of his daughter Niti and the queen from whom she is
reincarnated as well as additional aid from M. Nicol Hendry and Captain Mark Merrill,
the professor is able, by book‘s end, to stop the war that would have been, leaving
England and the Continent in peace.
These stories all share a common theme—invasion. In two of the stories, it is
England which is invaded; in the other, Peru. The concern about invasion was so
common at the time that numerous narratives, called ―invasion-scare‖ stories or novels,
were published in the period extending from the 1871 publication of The Battle of
Dorking up until the First World War (Clarke, ―Future War‖ par. 3). Most of the stories
that were written in this time dealt with industrialized nations facing off against one
another, but two writers of mummy fiction, Boothby and Griffith, between them wrote
three stories that incorporated the occultic theme of mummy fiction.13 Of those three
stories, one, Griffith‘s The Romance of Golden Star, was clearly anti-imperialist, while
the other tales were mixed in their views of imperialism, a fact reflecting the division of
public opinion on the subject. In some of these tales there is a sense of the superiority of
13
I. F. Clarke, the premiere scholar in the field of future war or invasion scare fiction, has written or edited
several studies on the subject of invasion (or future war) fiction. See, for example, ―Future-War Fiction:
The First Main Phase, 1871-1900, in Science Fiction Studies 24, available online at
http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/clarkeess.htm as well as his introduction to The Tale of the Next Great War,
1871-1914 (Syracuse UP, 1995),pages 1-26.
35
British culture and ability: the anti-imperialist Golden Star gives voice to the idea of the
superiority of British culture as the book‘s hero, the Incan emperor Vilcaroya, learns how
to operate in the modern world, learning everything from how to wage war to how to
treat a woman; and the story of The Mummy and Miss Nitocris suggests a parallel
between the empire of ancient Egypt and the modern British Empire. Only Boothby‘s
tale of Pharos, the Egyptian seems especially hard on England. While not anti-imperialist
in nature as Griffith‘s tale of Golden Star is, it nonetheless presents a weakened Britain,
unable to defend itself and deserving of punishment. The picture that emerges from these
three narratives is a picture of a Britain mixed its opinion of imperialism. At some level,
all three stories thematize imperialism, and consider the justice of that system. On the
other hand, the tales have a great regard for British culture. In the end, we see a problem
without a clear solution. The morality of empire is doubtful, so much so, that as James
Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), ―the well known English socialist‖ and first Labour
prime minister of Great Britain, writing in 1907 comments, the guilt drives imperialists to
their ―spiritual leaders,‖ who may ―invent . . . some justification as that of a ‗regrettable
necessity‘ in order that [they] may serve both God and Mammon‖ (―What I Saw in South
Africa‖ 700; MacDonald 20). But giving up the empire never seems to be the solution—
it may be all right for the Peruvians in Golden Star, but not for Britain. In the final
analysis, we see an England trapped in its power and driven by its pride and its guilt. As a
―superior‖ race, the English were destined to rule; it was their mission from God
(Anderson 24-25). And while the majority believed that it was incumbent upon them to
hold those territories that Britain already possessed, they were, for the most part,
36
―reluctant imperialists‖ (Heyck 91). Their pride (and, undoubtedly, a desire for greater
influence and opportunities for trade) had driven them out into the world, but once there
they might be, as they were in Egypt, trapped in a place where they had never, according
to official explanations, desired to be. But because of their duty to themselves and the
rest of the world, they could, by their own account, never leave Egypt until Egypt was
prepared to fulfill its responsibilities.14
The stories of these tales tell us something about the concerns and fears of the fin
de siècle Briton. Looking at the economic, social, and political situation of the time, those
fears are not that difficult to understand. In the first place, as Thomas William Heyck
tells us in
A History of the Peoples of the British Isles: From 1870 to the Present, the modern
Briton of the period (late 19th, early 20th century) saw a world in which the great
advantages of a head start in the industrial game began to show signs of wear. In the
earliest days of industrialization, England had no real competitors; the field was wide
open. Other nations, however, soon began to catch up as the growth rate of the British
economy slowed from a three percent growth per year for the first three quarters of the
century to only two percent for the last quarter (Heyck 4). This slowing of the economy,
combined with economic growth in other nations, meant that countries like the United
States and Britain, which by 1900 produced more iron and steel than Britain, could
overtake the British lead. Militarily and diplomatically there were problems as well.
The formation of modern states from smaller principalities that had made up both Italy
14
See Lord Cromer‘s evaluation of the problem of Egypt in his study of Modern Egypt.
37
and Germany was additional cause for concern for Great Britain. Germany in particular
was cause for anxiety with its militaristic tradition and its ―rapidly growing population of
49 million in 1890‖ compared to Britain‘s much smaller 37.4 million (Heyck 86).
Germany‘s decision to build up its navy, according to the First and Second Navy Laws of
1898 and 1900 further threatened Britons who were beginning to lose their advantage
over other nations as Germany and others like her began to build modern navies of their
own (Matin, ―Kim‖ 360-61).
The European scramble for African colonies driven by a desire for greater
prestige and power prompted additional fears for British economic and military security.
The late nineteenth century is full of examples of nations striving to establish their
presence in various parts of the world not only to increase their power and influence, but
also as a way to provide military security through the establishment of buffer zones as
well as strong strategic positions from which to defend themselves in case of war.15
Colonization was one of the primary ways in which this was accomplished. This was
especially important for industrialized Britain, which had become quite dependent on
trade with other nations and its colonies in order to feed its people and provide raw
materials for its factories. A naval blockade could bring Britain to its knees. The
emergence of other European nations ―into the colonial world‖ was thus a source of
anxiety for native Britons as they threatened the formerly uncontested lead of the British
15
Egypt was originally selected by the French as important because of it would provide a point from which
England could be attacked.
38
(Heyck 91). It was a game for world power, played out on the world‘s stage, destined
eventually to explode in the second decade of the new century.
This scramble for African colonies, according to at least one source, can be laid
partially at the feet of the British with their invasion of Egypt and is an example of how
Britain grew its empire almost ―absent-minded[ly]‖ (Albrecht-Carrié 190). The problems
that led to the decision to invade were manifold. In the first place, there was the matter of
the Suez Canal, important to Britain for the convenient route it provided to India and the
Cape of Good Hope. Free access to the canal had to be maintained, but there was some
concern that availability of the canal to the British might be endangered as a result of the
rebellion of Egyptian soldiers over Khedive Ismaїl‘s mismanagement of funds and the
disastrous effects it had on their pay when, in 1876, Egypt was thrown into bankruptcy.
Britain became involved in the situation, according to official explanations, in an attempt
to restore order in 1882 when riots broke out in Alexandria, though there is some
question as to the adequacy of this explanation.16 Britain had hoped to intervene in the
situation accompanied by the French government, but when France declined to act,
Gladstone, affirming his move was in the interest of Europe as a whole, went ahead
without their assistance. Once in Egypt, Britain placed Sir Evelyn Baring (later Lord
Cromer) in the position of consul general, where he placed the Egyptian government back
in firm financial standing, restoring the financial fortunes of all nations which had risked
their money in Egypt. Though Britain had no official standing in Egypt—Egypt was still
nominally a part of the Ottoman Empire—she remained there until 1936, reasoning, that
16
See A. G. Hopkins, ―The Victorians and Africa: A Reconsideration of the Occupation of Egypt, 1882.‖
39
Britain could not leave until Egypt was able to rule herself, a situation which, in the
British judgment, never arose (Hopkins 388).
The scramble for colonies in Africa by other nations, particularly a newly more
aggressive Germany as well as France, broke out in the mid-1880s, instilling the British
with concern about the intention of other nations with regard to their military intent,
resulting in concern that such power hungry nations might attempt conquest of Britain as
well as her colonies. In addition there was concern about the possible hostility of those
nations which had been colonized, a result of moral ambivalence about the whole
question of empire. One form that this anxiety took was the fear of reverse
colonization—the fear that by force or, more likely, by stealth, colonized others would
infiltrate Britain and destabilize it from within.17
This fear of reverse colonization overlapped with cultural discourses about
disease, which saw a parallel between the microbe-based theory of illness and the
infiltration of foreigners into Britain. Earlier theory held that disease was caused by bad
air issuing forth from specific locations. One could avoid illness, according to this
theory, by staying away from the place where the harmful air was located. Cell theory,
on the other hand, held that disease was the result, not of bad air, but of bacteria, which
would pierce the membranes of a previously healthy cell and make it sick. In the 1880s,
as this theory became widely understood, ―bacteria became a metaphor through which
one could articulate fears about all invisible enemies, military, political, or economic‖
17
Stephen D. Arata‘s ―The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization‖ and
Eitan Bar-Yosef‘s ―E. Nesbit and the Fantasy of Reverse Colonization: How Many Miles to Modern
Babylon?‖ provide further useful information on the subject.
40
(Otis 94). Laura Otis, to whom I owe this explanation of events, takes this cellular
explanation of disease and develops from it a proposition about identity based on
exclusion, an idea which she refers to as the ―membrane‖ theory. Simply put, the
―membrane‖ theory posits that identity works based on what it excludes: we can know
who or what we are by knowing what we are not (Otis 1). Otis‘s membrane theory takes
this idea of exclusion—what we are not—and derives the theory that cellular bodies
might be likened to individuals or nations with membranous borders that separate the me
from the not me. The material within the borders is the me, that without, the not me.
Throughout her study that follows the establishment of this theory, she then demonstrates
how it works in the writing of the scientist-physician writers whom she studies.
Otis is careful to demonstrate in her book how the anthropomorphic thinking of
scientists/researchers moved from the scientific community into metaphors to describe
the political situation of the time, a time in which, as a result of the microbe theory of
disease, humankind began to fear the small and to speak of the entrance of foreigners as
matters of infection that had sullied the pure British nation. This fear was then translated
into stories of the time that demonstrate the danger of biochemical weaponry that is
capable of decimating whole populations as well as tales that posit the danger of single,
lurking foreigners who present potential danger to the homeland. The prior case can be
seen in a story such as Jack London‘s ―The Unparalleled Invasion,‖ the latter in a tale
such as Pharos, the Egyptian. The foreign body that invades the British nation, of course,
is the microbe, the germ, that infects the cellular body. Though foreigners earlier in the
century had been encouraged to come to Britain in the 1860s, they began to be viewed
41
with consternation (Deacon 125-26). By the 1890s and early 1900s, stories of foreign
invader in tales like Dracula and The Beetle began to appear. International competition
for world power coupled with rumors of German spies in England fanned to a fever pitch
by invasion scare novelist William Le Queux‘s campaign to root out German spies only
made things worse (Matin, ―Hun‖ 434). Strangely enough, however, though fears of the
foreigner were widespread both in fiction and in reality in certain quarters and times, the
foreigner was also viewed as desirable other, as in the case of the beautiful and exotic
ward of Pharos, Valerie de Vocxqal. Though not an ―oriental woman,‖ Valerie partakes
of the same tradition of ―oriental‖ desirability that many of the Egyptian women in these
tales do, a fact which should not be surprising, for as Edward Said reminds us in his study
of Orientalism, the ―Oriental‖ was so often exoticized and presented as an object of
desire that ―[i]n time, ‗Oriental sex‘‖ became ‗as standard a commodity as any other
available in mass culture, with the result that readers and writers could have it if they
wished without necessarily going to the Orient‖ (190).
The foreigner, however, whether feared or viewed as exotically desirable,
potentially poses a threat, of one of two kinds, depending upon the origin of that threat.
For the foreigner of European extraction, the threat is typically to the power of the nation
under threat and the means of that threat are typically within the confines of western
thought. The colonized foreigner, however, poses not only a potential risk to the stability
of nationhood, but does so in such a way as to threaten western rationality as well as it
makes use of occult powers, for the colonized foreigner is typically deeply implicated in
the world of the spirit and functions best not in a world of western rationality but in a
42
world of magic and spirits that confound the western mind. The ―oriental‖ foreigner may
not, as Lord Cromer, author of Modern Egypt and British Consul General there until
1907, would have it, be capable of disciplined, rational behavior, but he (or she) does
possess a dangerous occult power (2: 146-47).
Yet, despite this potentially dangerous affinity to the occult, British racial thought
was such that it demanded the expansion of empire. Though matters of national security
and economics were undoubtedly at work as motivators of an expanding empire, other,
more moral, nobler notions were employed as justification in the imperial project. In
Egypt, the justification was the idea that, as Gladstone had argued, order needed to be
restored in a riotous, bankrupt Egypt. Britain, despite the absence of a French ally, was,
according to the official account, acting in the best interests of Europe. But other reasons
for imperial intervention were employed as well. By expanding empire, the thinking
went, Britain was sharing the wonder of its advanced civilization with underdeveloped
nations. Missionary societies, moreover, were spreading the gospel, tending to the
everlasting welfare of men‘s and women‘s souls. British imperial involvement in
addition added to the quality of life of colonials to whom the British, as in India, made
the opportunities of a more thorough education available. And besides all of this, there
was the matter of the fitness to rule. Those whom the British colonized were deemed by
the British incapable of ruling themselves, whereas the British were thought to be
especially skilled in matters of governance. The imperialistic ideal might be to rule in
nations until they were able to rule themselves, but from a British standpoint the reality,
43
as Lord Cromer points out in his study of Modern Egypt, was that ability to self-rule
remained ―far distant‖ (2: 567).
The imperial project, however, led those in some quarters to question the morality
of what Britain was doing. The idea of being a good neighbor, of treating those in other
nations as one would wish to be treated,18 was not being fulfilled. Nations were, to hear
MacDonald tell it What I Saw in South Africa, being used to their detriment and/or
destroyed when they failed to do as the British wished (qtd. in Thompson 168-69). The
British had, in his view, become a nation overbearing in its exercise of its military power.
The guilt and uncertainty about Britain‘s ability of maintaining the empire, resulting from
Britain‘s action on the world stage was expressed in pamphlets, speeches, books of
political commentary like MacDonald‘s, and in fiction as well, not the least of which was
in those stories of invasion found in the mummy stories of the time. The degree of the
guilt or the fear of incompetence varies according to story, but the question is an
important one that is often raised in the stories.
Guy Boothby‘s tale of Pharos, the Egyptian is one such tale. Narrated by artist
Cyril Forrester but to a great degree understood from the point of view of Pharos, the
Egyptian invader, the novel, though it in no way sees Pharos as other than an enemy of
Great Britain, nevertheless makes clear how a colonized nation might well be justified in
turning on an imperial force like England when that colonizing power sufficiently
18
MacDonald quotes a portion from a letter from Sir M. E. Grant Duff to one of his constituents that makes
this point nicely. In this letter, Duff writes: ―‗It is required that we should aim at living in the community
of nations as well-bred people live in society; gracefully acknowledging the rights of others, and confident,
if we ever think about the matter at all, that others will soon come to do no less for us‘‖ (15).
44
provokes the subject nation by unconscionable treatment of its (in this case, Egypt‘s)
dead. Such, in fact, is the basis of Pharos‘s case against Britain, for, according to
Pharos, Britain has been responsible for sacrilegious treatment of the graves of those
entombed in ancient Egypt and have therefore incurred the wrath of the ancient land‘s
gods. In response, those same gods send Pharos to punish the responsible nations for
their desecration of those graves. Viewed in this light, the reprisal, though one might
question its severity, seems perfectly reasonable. When, in addition to the punishment
for acts previously committed, one considers the reprehensible character of many of the
native Briton, one can hardly blame Pharos or his party for their acts of retribution.
Pharos makes this point to Forrester on a tour of London when he promises to show
Forrester London ―‗as I see it in my character of Pharos the Egyptian,‘‖ effectively
turning the logic driving British imperialism on its head. Using the same kind of logic
which the British use in expanding their empire, Pharos produces evidence in his tour of
London to support his impending attack on England.
Pharos‘s imperial logic begins with a picture of London society that is anything
but flattering. Those at the top of the social ladder are mean men and women, guilty of
various sins. One man‘s mysterious behavior suggests he is involved in espionage—an
activity at the time deemed in no way glamorous and beneath the honor of a gentleman—
another shows himself to be a social-climber. Mothers can be seen to be scheming to
find their daughters rich husbands and politicians in the House of Commons show their
concern with the nation‘s health to be a distant second to their concern for their party‘s
advancement. Wealthy playgoers are shown as the callous individuals they are, caring
45
more about being admired than they are in seeing the play which they interrupt with their
loud conversations. The lower classes are represented as well. A visit to a ―gambling
hell‖ brings Forrester and Pharos into contact with thieves and murderers, whose stories
Pharos gleefully tells. Outside the gambling establishment, violence and chaos reign as
well. A woman can be heard ―screaming for assistance‖ while across the street ―a couple
of men were fighting at the far end of an adjoining court‖ (337). The condition of the
poor whom Pharos and Forrester encounter at the end of their journey constitutes some of
the most severe criticism:
We visited Salvation Army Shelters, the cheapest of cheap lodginghouses, dosshouses in comparison to which a workhouse would be a
palace; dark railway arches, where we found homeless men, women, and
children endeavouring to snatch intervals of rest between the visits of
patrolling policemen; the public parks, where the grass was dotted with
recumbent forms, and every seat was occupied; and then, turning
homewards, reached Park Lane just as the clocks were striking seven, as
far as I was concerned sick at heart, not only of the sorrow and sin of
London, but of the callous indifference to it displayed by Pharos. (340)
This is the world that Pharos wishes to destroy. Having looked at it, full of hypocrisy,
vanity, social climbing, vain ambition, crime, and a government‘s and a people‘s crass
disregard of the condition of those around them, one can hardly blame him, despite the
quote‘s obvious sympathy with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. This is social
criticism that could well be leveled against the powerful land and one that many socially
46
conscious Britons might well hold themselves. Though Pharos is portrayed throughout
the book as wickedness incarnate, he nevertheless tells the truth here. The book does not
side with him as his eventual casting into hell by the Egyptian gods makes clear, but
Britain‘s social shortcomings here nevertheless make clear the justification for the
punishment it suffers at the hands of Pharos.19
The punishment which Britain suffers in this story is the same that numerous
other European nations in the novel have suffered for the desecration of Egyptian
tombs—a grave plague which has killed thousands upon thousands of victims. This
choice of method for destruction, a kind of biological warfare, is interesting for several
reasons. As we have seen, it was only as a result of long research that by the mid-1880s
the knowledge of the spread of disease by germs was discovered, resulting in a situation,
where, as Otis points out ―[s]mallness itself became menacing‖ (94). Deadly viruses
could be transmitted by germs so small as to evade the unaided human eye. Though the
theory was unknown, such means had been employed since ancient times when
―retreating armies [would place] human or animal cadavers into wells] and later in the
Middle Ages at the siege of Caffa in 1346 when ―plague cadavers‖ were allegedly
―catapulted‖ into the city (Wheelis 13). It was also during the latter nineteenth century,
thanks to scientific discoveries, that writers such as H. G. Wells, knowledgeable in
19
H. Rider Haggard‘s short story, ―Smith and the Pharaohs,‖ deals with the same question of British
culpability in the practice of tomb raiding as it was practiced in his day. In the story, James Ebenezer
Smith, after having found the tomb of an ancient Egyptian queen with whose image he had fallen in love
with several years before, finds himself trapped in a room full of mummies at a museum in Paris. He falls
asleep and then awakens to discover the dead mummies all risen and in counsel. They discover him and
put him on trial for desecrating the tomb of the woman with whose image he had fallen in love. Various
charges are laid against him in the process of the trial, but eventually he is acquitted because he had done it
all for love.
47
scientific matters, began to consider the usefulness of invisible microbes in the
destruction of one‘s enemies. Wells‘s comic tale of ―The Stolen Bacillus‖ posits the
dangers of such small creatures as does his tale of The War of the Worlds, where the
technologically advanced Martians are only finally destroyed by germs that are harmless
to human beings but deadly to extraterrestrials. And the same concept is considered in
reverse in the story of The Germ Growers, by Australian prelate Robert Potter, a tale in
which demonic beings establish a farm in the hinterlands of Australia where they grow
germs to sicken the human race so that human beings might turn against God.
These stories, like the narrative of Pharos , are tales of invasion that defy our
commonsensical expectations. The enemy in these stories is not what we expect: extraterrestrials, demonic angels, and a resurrected mummy are more than the rational mind
can typically be expected to accept. The religious among us, of course, might have no
difficulty with demonic beings, but their coming to us as germ-growing beings from
another planet is more than the most orthodox would be willing to concede. The idea of
aliens from outer space, for many, is just as ludicrous. And resurrected mummies? Such
things are just beyond the pale. For tales of reverse colonization, such as the tale of
Pharos, ideas of such means of destruction do something else: they provide a means
whereby a smaller or weaker force might gain the upper hand against a superior power.
This power of the small is precisely what is used when Pharos, with a very small group of
supporters whom we rarely see in the novel, attacks and almost overpowers Great Britain
through the power of a deadly disease. In framing the means of the onslaught in this
48
way, Boothby creates in Pharos a metaphorical parallel of the disease-infected microbe
attacking the healthy cell.
The infecting agent in the tale of Pharos, of course, is Pharos himself. Political
rhetoric of the time, as well as numerous tales of fiction—Otis, in particular, mentions
tales of Arthur Conan Doyle—cast the foreigners in the role of infecting agent, fearing
their presence would pollute the racial stock and cultural rituals and practices by their
mere presence in the social stream.20 Boothby thus takes this racialized fear, provoked in
general, no doubt by the cultural guilt faced by the colonizer on which numerous critics
have commented, and sets up a major infection narrative, moving from the
microscopically small stage of bodily infection to the larger, both physically and
politically, stage of international attack, which interestingly enough returns once again to
the microscopic scale as the germs of infection attack healthy bodies and destroy them.
The infection begins on a small scale when Forrester is ―compelled to drink‖ a ―potion‖
which carries the plague (188). It moves on to the large stage of political attack when
Forrester, without knowledge or consent, spreads death as he moves from Egypt toward
London. Death itself moves us once again to the region of the small, for while the impact
of the disease is international, the killing itself takes place in the microscopic regions of
individual bodies where the disease invisibly kills those with the invasion of the lethal
microbe. The body has become the battleground, the invading microbe paralleling the
larger biological invasion of Pharos against Egypt‘s enemies.
20
See Chapter 4, ―Arthur Conan Doyle: An Imperial Immune System,‖ in Laura Otis‘s Membranes:
Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Science, and Politics.
49
This process of thinking is hardly surprising and is certainly fitting given the time
in which the tales were written as germ theory was relatively recent (mid-1880s) and
since at least one of the pioneers in the field—doctor, politician, and medical scientist
Rudolf Virchow—was prone to anthropomorphize the bodily functions involved. This
thinking essentially depicted the cell as an independent living being, bound by its cellular
membrane which separated it from all other cells. The cell, furthermore, in accordance
with the sociopolitical parallel, dwelt within a society of other individuals.
The
conglomerate of those cells, of course, made up various organs, which would then have
to work together to make up the whole body. The idea hearkens back at least as far as the
ancient Christian church where individual Christians in the epistles from the Apostle Paul
were described as various body parts of the body of Christ and more recently in Thomas
Hobbes‘s Leviathan.
As Otis points out, it is the borders of the cells, the membranes, that separate the
contents of the cell from everything around it. Applied to nations, this border is what
separates the inhabitants of a nation—the English, the Germans, the French, the
Russians—from all other nationalities. Within these borders (we are talking about
nations again) certain rules, ways of doing things, cultural traditions, ways of thinking,
apply. Infection, according to these terms, is a matter of borders which have been
penetrated, allowing the ―not me‖ to enter in. The ideal behind this whole way of
thinking is based upon the idea of a homogenized populace, all of one race.
This idea of a homogenized populace, a notion of one race, complicates the
situation in Britain, for, despite H. G. Wells‘s massaging of the facts, the British are a
50
nation of immigrants from various national/racial stock: Celts, Germans, French, and so
forth. This mixture, according to Wells, would make one nation, one people—so how
would one discriminate between the acceptable racial stock of the Briton vs. the
unacceptable? Part of the answer would be historical. The racial stock of which Wells
and others like him were so fond was that of the Anglo-Saxon. They had been in Britain
more than a thousand years, ever since the overseas migration in beginning in the early
fifth century A.D. The defeated Celts, however, do not figure so well in this equation,
and the presence of any other groups, Africa, Chinese, and so forth, was simply dismissed
from consideration, except as foreign outsiders. Eastern Europeans and Jews, immigrants
who had been officially welcomed in the nation, were likewise excluded from
membership of the racialized Briton. The reality, then, of the pure cell, the pure nation,
set off by its borders to protect its pure race, is that such a nation did not exist, but was in
fact a fantasy, a construal of nationhood that posited the powerful classes of Anglo-Saxon
Christians as the nation, which all those that differed were ignored.
Given this state of affairs, then, how does Pharos, penetrating the border, work in
a nation that is in reality hardly a pure one to begin with? It is tempting to argue that skin
color might play a role in denigrating/distancing Pharos further than other foreigners,
and certainly we know that dark-skinned colonists, such as those in India, for example,
were often derogatorily referred to as ―niggers‖ by racist literature of the time. But to
argue the point in this way would fail to take into account the way in which Egyptian
women are so often depicted as women of lighter skin tones aside from the obvious fact
that by race all that was often implied was a difference of nationality rather than in what
51
we today would call ―racial‖ difference.21 Such a position would also go against the
beliefs about the race of the ancient Egyptians that researchers of the time had been at
some pains to discover, findings showing that the peoples of the ancient land had
themselves been a mixture of lighter and darker skinned (Posener 237). The debate over
this issue, in fact, goes on today. No, Pharos‘s dangerous alterity is not a result of skin
tones, but of a difference of attitude and culture hidden within a hideous, apparently
physical form.22 Physical appearance thus does play a role in others‘ perception of him
as foreign, much in the same way that villains might be portrayed in fairy tales or old
westerns where the good guys can be separated from the bad guys by the color of their
hats. And it cannot be denied that his hideous alien appearance very much affects the
way that others perceive him; but others‘ reception of him goes beyond this, for though
the ancient Egyptian can be quite charming when he chooses, the evil side of his
personality is so palpable that those who come near him, as in the case of the exhibition
of Forrester‘s new painting of ancient Egypt at Burlington House, instinctively ―[draw]
away from him‖ when he approaches (36). And it is this despicableness, this sense of
evil incarnate, that makes Pharos work as an infecting agent in a far from racially pure
Britain, for Pharos is an exaggeration of the fears of xenophobic Britons: he is evil writ
large, the personification of foreign evil intent on the destruction of England.
21
See Stuart Anderson, who comments, in his essay, ―Race and Rapprochement,‖ on the slippery nature of
―race‖ to mean whatever its speakers desired (18-19).
22
I say ―apparently‖ here because it is difficult to say exactly what Pharos is. In ancient times, Pharos was
the Egyptian magician Ptahmes, but he died and his body was mummified. Pharos, nonetheless, lives on
and, though his diet is restricted, he does eat. This would hardly make him a ghost, but just what he is
remains a mystery.
52
Pharos‘s enmity, apparent in his attitude toward Britain and other European
nations, further marks him as an invading microbe, for his crossing of the border is for
purposes of harm and his entrance into an already compromised cell by reason of foreign
substance (other nations) within the cell can be read one of two ways: either Pharos‘s job
as invader will be eased as a result of the already compromised cell, or, and more likely,
Pharos will have to be portrayed as eminently wicked in order to stand out in contrast to
foreigners already within the border. If Pharos is the ―infection,‖ then he must be vile
and the presence of other potentially infecting agents must either be negligible or nonexistent.
As infecting agent, Pharos crosses several significant borders, ranging from the
most general to the most personal and particular, indicating an increasing personal threat
that in turn impacts the general population. The first border Pharos crosses is an
accomplished fact that we readers never see occur but whose significance cannot be
denied: the crossing of the national border. The time scheme of Pharos‘s mission given
to him by the Egyptian gods is not entirely clear so it is impossible to date when he has
crossed the border, but by the time of the book‘s action, he has already crossed the border
into Britain as well as Italy, where he has a wonderfully luxurious home, as well as
having entered into numerous other European nations where he has gone by reason of his
ward Valerie de Vocxqal‘s violin concerti. In Britain, in particular, the land we know the
most about in terms of Pharos‘s activities, he has been able, by reason of his occult
powers, to gather large amounts of intelligence about people. He tells Forrester that there
is very little that he does not know, and he demonstrates this fact numerous times by
53
revealing incredibly private information about the various individuals he and Forrester
encounter within the course of the book. The next more personal border that Pharos
crosses is that of private property. The borders of home or business—Pharos invades
both as he goes about his work of invasion—parallel the national borders as barriers
which keep out the foreign from the local. We know of at least two private borders that
Pharos crosses: the curiosity shop of Clausand, whom he murders, and the home of Cyril
Forrester. Both of these invasions result in the most personal affront of all—the crossing
of personal/bodily borders. With the shopkeeper, that border is crossed, at least
metaphorically, as Pharos shatters the body which protects the life within; with Forrester,
the border is crossed through hypnotic suggestion when Pharos, in a manner that is, as
Victoria Margree points out, akin to rape, subdues an unwilling Forrester and exerts
control over his victim‘s mind, subjecting Forrester to one of the greatest affronts a man
of his time might experience: loss of control over his own mental processes (67).
The infection metaphor that Otis uses makes the most sense when we consider the
results of Pharos‘s activities, for Pharos, literally, through his use of Forrester as a carrier
of plague, infects and destroys countless victims across Europe and England: the
metaphorical, that is, becomes the literal. Pharos, the source of foreign ideas and
attitudes, infects metaphorically through his own small presence in Britain and elsewhere,
endangering the stability potentially through his mingling with others. In the same way,
the literal infection takes place as Forrester, the carrier of the disease, the weapon loaded
by Pharos and aimed by him, comes into contact with the inhabitants of numerous
European countries and Britain.
54
The horror of this action, especially the fact that a foreign entity might turn a man
into a weapon against his own country, makes our image of Pharos more despicable than
ever. Pharos becomes, that is, the poster boy for the threat of foreign infection. As such,
the story ultimately makes a case for imperialism that even the most ―reluctant
imperialist‖ might well accept, for the forces of a less-than rationally based mentality—
forces of primitivism, savagery, and darkness, to the western mind—are herein
demonstrated as posing a danger to British security and must therefore be controlled in
much the same way that the civil and financial chaos of Egypt herself had to be managed.
By racializing and demonizing Pharos, the story ultimately resolves the uncomfortable
issues about empire that the story raises, suggesting that Britons were right to fear the
foreign and that England herself was justified in the actions she took in protecting herself
from those threats, for though the empire might not be perfect, her enemies were worse.
George Griffith‘s The Mummy and Miss Nitocris is a different sort of story.
Though both the tale of Pharos and that of Nitocris are similar in that they deal with the
subject of invasion and mummies, they are different because rather than looking at a tale
of weakness, where England is almost overcome by external threats, this story is a tale of
British power more in keeping with the way that Britons liked to think of themselves and
their nation. In this story, the English are the saviors of the world who, through the
occult powers of Professor Franklin Marmion and his daughter Niti and her earlier
incarnation, defeat those who would rule over them.
This story of British strength came at a time when many had become greatly
concerned about the state of the British racial stock. A disappointing performance in the
55
Boer War in South Africa ―following upon several years of agricultural and industrial
depression, rural depopulation and mounting commercial and imperial competition from
expansive new rivals, provoked a veritable orgy of criticism, enquiry and analysis
focusing upon the alarming possibility that the race was somehow decaying‖ (Soloway
137). Disturbing statistics from military and civilian studies of the problem can account
for a great deal of this anxiety. Statistics provided by journalist Arnold White state that
―403 of every 1,000 recruits in industrial cities such as Manchester were unsuitable for
military service‖ (Soloway 140). These figures ―were inflated to three of every five by
1901, and were supplemented by B. Seebohm Rowntree‘s discovery that of 3,600 men
examined for service in York, Leeds and Sheffield, 26.5 percent were rejected while
another 29 to 30 percent were so marginal as to suggest the possibility that at least half
the working population might be unavailable for military duty‖ (Soloway 140). There
were other problems as well. George F. Shee, writing in 1903 in Nineteenth Century
noted problems regarding declining height and weight of young men. ―Using recruitment
statistics Shee reported that the average height of enlistees had fallen from 5 feet 5.8
inches to 5 fee 5.4 inches between 1890 and 1900, while their weight had declined from
126 to 124.4 pounds. Standard height, which in 1845 was 5 feet 6 inches, was at a
recorded low of 5 feet in 1901‖ (qtd. in Soloway n. 22). There were additional concerns
about declining fertility and birth rates. ―After generations of high rates of reproduction
averaging around 34 births per 1,000 of the population and reaching a record peak of 36.3
in 1876, fertility began to fall relentless. By 1901 it stood at 28.5 and by 1914, 24.0, a
drop of more than 33 percent in less than forty years. During the same period the large
56
Victorian family, averaging between and six children, gave way to an Edwardian
average that was close to half that number‖ (153). These figures were alarming; ―With
organs of opinion as different as the Daily Mail and the Lancet describing the falling
birth-rate as an ‗ominous threat‘ and a ‗menace‘ pointing to ‗a national calamity seriously
threatening the future welfare of our race‘ it was clear that diminishing fertility was fast
becoming another manifestation of waning racial vigour in the public‘s mind‖ (154).
The bad news, for the traditional man or woman, does not stop here, though.
There were other signs of degeneration, as it was regarded, as well. The 1880s and 1890s,
according to the novelist George Gissing, were a period of ―sexual anarchy‖ (v. 113).
Besides the problem of the New Woman, there were concerns about a loss of masculinity
devolving into homosexuality. The Oscar Wilde trial in 1895 did not help matters much
either as it caused a ―moral panic that inaugurated a period of censorship affecting both
advanced women and homosexuals‖ (Showalter 171). Wilde‘s trial, however, ―while it
was unique in terms of the individual in question and the scandal it cause‖ was not the
only scandal of its kind (Adut 17). Before the Wilde trial in 1895, numerous scandals
had shocked the nation: the ―Boulton and Park in 1870, the Dublin Castle scandal of
1884, the Cleveland Street scandal of 1889-90 . . .‖ (Weeks 21). In a day in which
homosexuality is widely accepted, such attitudes seem difficult to understand today, but
for the late-Victorian and Edwardian, the homosexual was not only a ―‗corrupter of
youth,‘‖ but ―a source of danger and depravity,‖ a mentally deranged person, and,
according to the early thinking of nineteenth-century sexologist Richard von Krafft-
57
Ebing, ―a functional sign of ‗degeneration‘‖ (Adut 17; Weeks 27). The nation, in the
view of many traditional-thinking contemporaries, was going to hell in a hand basket.
Little wonder then that there might be room for a book of the sort we see in The
Mummy and Miss Nitocris. In this novel, we behold not a mere contest of mortal against
mortal, but a contest of the gods. Not a tale of masculine weakness, such as we behold in
Pharos, the Egyptian and Iras, a Mystery, this is a story made up of superheroes of the
Superman variety. When we look at the English characters in this story, we know,
whatever doubts to the contrary may exist in the outside world, the English are a people
fit to rule. A look at the major players in the tale makes this point perfectly clear.
The main character in the book is Professor Franklin Marmion. From page one,
we know this is a man of substance, intelligence. He is ―one of the most celebrated
mathematicians and physicists in Europe,‖ and is capable of filling an auditorium full of
his peers when he speaks (n.p.). But there is more to Professor Marmion than a great
mind. The professor, thanks to a mystical experience he has in what is called the ―fourth
dimension,‖ is capable of god-like power. He can, through his will alone, move freely
about in time and space when in the fourth dimension, dipping into the past, looking at
hidden things in the present, venturing forth in to the future. He can also cause those
whom he deems unworthy to die just by willing it, as he does near the conclusion of the
novel with Phadrig Amena, the Egyptian adept who assists Prince Oscar Oscarovitch.
Professor Marmion is aided in his quest to save the world by his daughter, Niti
Marmion, and by Queen Nitocris, whom we see only in spiritual form in the fourth
dimension. These two women are basically one person since Niti is the modern
58
reincarnation of the queen. Though Niti comes to power later than her father, the
professor, does, she is every bit as powerful as he. With the aid the queen, she ultimately
destroys the chief villain of the novel, Prince Oscarovitch.
The goal of the story, though we do not know it until we are well within the pages
of the book, is to save the world from an impending world war to be caused by
Oscarovitch. To accomplish this goal, the professor uses his special powers to discover
what Oscarovitch is up to and then to destroy him. The professor, however, does not
depend upon his powers alone to defeat Oscarovitch, but enlists the help M. Nicole
Hendry, the ―Head of the English Department of the International Police Bureau‖ as well
as the assistance of a man in love with his daughter, Captain Mark Merrill. Through the
help of all of these individuals—his daughter, the queen, M. Hendry, and Merrill—the
professor manages not only to defeat one villain, but to save the world from ultimate
catastrophe.
The story we see here is one that, if there were any doubt, resuscitates a belief in
the English as fit rulers of the world. At their most confident, this is certainly how a
number of Englishmen and women saw themselves. To hear them tell it, the English
(Anglo-Saxon) were everything that was wonderful and fine in the world: they loved
liberty, were practical, rational, adventurous, energetic, honest and patient; on a mission
from God, they were destined to rule (Anderson 20; 24-25). They were master organizers
whose duty it was to extend their civilization (Anderson 25). They were, according to
Tennyson, the ―noblest men‖ (qtd. in Gilbert 15). Author and journalist Edward Dicey
linked the English (the Anglo-Saxon English) with ancient Rome (Anderson 24). During
59
the Reformation, they were ―championed‖ as ―successors to the Israelites of the Old
Testament (McBratney 13). Many stories of ancient Egypt, such as the mummy stories
we look at in this dissertation, saw the modern day Briton as the successor of ancient
Egypt, quite often literally as a reincarnation of some ancient ruler or priest.
The problem of invasion is that the English identity might be threatened. An
encroachment of foreign blood might well do it in. Intermarriage with foreigners would
weaken the Anglo-Saxon blood, so that this people, fit to rule, would become something
else. There was a great deal of evidence, mostly among the poor, of problems with
physical deterioration, which can be reversed; but the fear was that this deterioration
might lead to degeneration, an irreversible situation (Soloway 144). Britons were afraid
that the losses in virility, physique, and stamina, would become a permanent fixture of
the race as debilitating genetic losses, caused by less than ideal environmental factors,
were passed down through weakened genetic material (Soloway 144). It makes sense.
We all try to account for the changes in our world, and this approach, given the popular
understanding of evolution with its possible result in devolution might lead to any
number of fears.
The problem of invasion, of course, is the problem of the penetration of borders.
Using Otis‘s membrane theory gives us a situation like this. The nation, in this case,
England, is the cell. It is protected by a membrane which keeps foreign matter out.
Within those borders certain legal and cultural rules apply that are well known to all
those dwelling within the border. If the membrane is pierced, the viability of the cell is
threatened. It may become sick; it certainly becomes something different than it had
60
been before. Despite the fact of numerous invasions that led to the population that
inhabited Britain in the fin de siècle, native Britons tended to see themselves as a people,
excluding, of course, Celts and foreigners. The British were, according to late nineteenth
century ideology, an Anglo-Saxon people.
As the story of Nitocris is written, though it is concerned preeminently with
invasion, there is actually very little in the way of invasion of the British. The threat is
there, but it is rendered null and void as Professor Marmion and company fight against it
and prevent its ever happening. This does not mean, of course, that there is no invasion
at all in the story. Fortunately, for the comfort of its British readers, though, most of the
invasion of borders is either done by the British themselves or is inflicted on other
nations. Managing invasions in this way bolsters the picture of British invincibility while
nevertheless pointing out the potential danger that should concern every patriotic British
subject.
The opening invasion of the novel, however, is very personal and very British, for
it is the invasion of the home of the novel‘s protagonists, Professor and Niti Marmion.
This invasion is nothing other than a story of reverse colonization that we see so often in
the tales of invasion. It is the story of Egypt against Great Britain, of Phadrig Amena,
who sends his two servants, Pent-Ah and Neb-Anat, to retrieve the mummy of Queen
Nitocris, whom they wish to return to Egypt.
The invasion of Professor Marmion‘s home rehearses a situation often
contemplated in mummy fiction: the theft of an Egyptian mummy. It is for this reason
that Egypt, represented in the bodies of Pent-Ah and Neb-Anat (and, in other scenes, in
61
the person of Phadrig Amena), comes to England (Professor Marmion‘s house). The
attempted burglary closely parallels national invasions. The invading country, in the
persons of Neb-Anat and Pent-Ah as I have said, must first cross the border of that nation
which they choose to attack. The walls of the house and the locks upon the door
represent those very borders that we see in Otis‘s membrane theory that are supposed to
protect the nation from attack. A window, however, proves to be the weakness in the
border, and it is through this means of ingress that Pent-Ah and Neb-Anat enter. Once
inside, they have other borders to cross once they discover the mummy case is missing
the mummy which they have come to restore to their native land. They go from room to
room until they come to the unlocked door of the professor‘s daughter, Niti. Once inside,
they are astonished, for lying asleep in the bed is what they believe to the living
embodiment of their queen.23
Niti‘s double nature, that of both a modern young Englishwoman and the
reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian queen, plays an important role in the novel, for it
establishes a firm connection between two empires, between the empire of ancient Egypt
and early twentieth-century Britain. Her identity as a queen, moreover, helps us to see
Niti as a legitimate representative of government. But it is here that there is an
interesting twist on the whole idea of invasion, for the Egyptian identity of Niti turns the
idea of invasion on its head, for with Niti as a representative of Egypt, the invasion thus
23
It is somewhat difficult to accurately describe the relationship between Niti and Nitocris. While Niti
Marmion is the reincarnation of the ancient queen, she also has an independent existence from her. Thus,
while Neb-Anat and Pent-Ah see the queen they seek, they are looking at the professor‘s daughter, a
modern young woman of the early twentieth century.
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becomes almost incestuous, for with this understanding of her identity, we see Egypt
attacking Egypt. Professor Marmion‘s identity ultimately does the same thing, for the
professor, as we learn in his visit with the queen in the fourth dimension, was actually an
ancient Egyptian himself, Ma-Rimōn, a priest who, according to Nitocris, ― ‗almost stood
upon the threshold of the Inmost Sanctuary of Knowledge‖ (n.p.).
Both the professor and his daughter are thus reincarnations of powerful people, a
notion perfectly in keeping with the exalted vision many Britons of the time held of
themselves as we have seen. Niti stands to gain the most in this change in circumstance
since she, as the unmarried daughter of the professor has little personal power. With her
elevation to the fourth dimension, she gains the considerable power that allows her to
take down the wicked Oscarovitch. The professor already has considerably more power
as a man, both as her father and as a mathematician and physicist of considerable
reputation. But what is perhaps most interesting in their situation is their position as
Englishman and woman. In looking at the invasion of the Marmion home, we see the
invasion of England and we learn how the English handle such matters. More
importantly, we learn that the English, in keeping with their exalted view of themselves,
prove themselves to be eminently more skilled and powerful than those who would attack
them.
The story of invasion in this scene is the story of savage, non-whites against
superior English forces. Because Niti has not yet learned of her status as a reincarnated
queen of ancient Egypt and, more significantly, because she has not yet been elevated to
the fourth dimension and has not received those considerable powers, she is largely an
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object to be conquered and carried away.24 The professor, however, having already
received his power, serves well as a representative of a powerful England, for not only is
he a man of prestige in the modern world, but he is the reincarnation of a man of
considerable power from the past. His interactions with the burglars who come into his
house show his (and England‘s) considerable power over those who would oppose him.
We see the professor‘s superiority in this situation from the very beginning where
we note his superior access to knowledge. The professor, unknown to the interlopers
who have entered his study, are perfectly visible to him when he looks into a mirror that,
without his consciously willing it to be so, serves as a window into the study where he
can see the man and the woman who have come to steal his mummy. With this mummy,
he can see through walls and know what is going on. His powers of language, moreover,
make it possible to understand what the man and woman are saying to each other, though
they speak to one another in a language with which he had not formerly been
acquainted—Coptic. He also has the ability to make himself invisible, which he does,
and then sneaks up on them, scaring them out of their wits and then punishing Pent-Ah,
the man, with a spanking as though he were a child, then ordering the two of them from
his house. In this scene he has made clear the physical and moral superiority that British
imperialists felt described them in their relationships with a necessarily inferior other.25
24
She serves in this capacity later on, as we shall see, when Oscarovitch first lays his eyes on her and
swears to have her whether she wishes it or not.
25
Elliot Gilbert describes this dynamic in the following manner: ―Thus, the average nineteenth-century
man who believed in imperialism necessarily believed, first, in the physical and moral superiority of the
colonialists; second, in the (at least temporary) physical and moral inferiority of the natives; and third, in
the possibility that the colonialists, by their presence and through their efforts, might improve the lot of the
natives‖ (119).
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The English superiority we see in the foregoing scene contrasts sharply with
another invasion—that of the home of Prince Zastrow, Oscarovitch‘s chief obstacle to the
Russian throne should Tsar Nicholas fall. Zastrow, while a man of honor and respectable
masculinity, does not compare in power with the remarkable Professor Marmion.
Zastrow, secretly opposed by his wife and several of his closest friends, is overcome by
the administration of a drug surreptitiously delivered to him to make him sleep. His body
is then taken up and driven to the ship which Oscarovitch has waiting.
The Zastrow kidnapping, because of the nature in which it is accomplished, takes
us to yet another level of invasion—invasion of the body. The walls of Zastrow‘s home
at the Castle of Trelitz are penetrated as many another border is crossed in Oscarovitch‘s
campaign for power—through stealth. The feared foreigner on English soil comes to life
in this parallel of the small, secretive enemy who can destroy within. Similar in a fashion
to the spies that invasion novelist William Le Queux warned of just a few short years
before the First World War in the introduction to his novel, Spies of the Kaiser: Plotting
the Downfall of England, Zastrow‘s enemies, whom he thought friends, have betrayed
him from within his inner circle. Stealth thus penetrates the first border to the prince—
the protective walls of his castle. Stealth also accomplishes the most intimate of border
crossing as well—that of the prince‘s body. The border of Zastrow‘s body, the skin
which separates him from the outside world, is crossed when the sleeping potion is
administered to place the prince under the power of those who oppose him. He is
rendered powerless in a manner somewhat similar to hypnotism , but the invasion is not
as personal as hypnosis, for while the drug can put the prince to sleep, it does not assert
65
control over his mind. It does, however, render him powerless and in need of rescue.
The foreigner cannot save himself, but, as we shall see, the Englishman can save the
world.
The more nefarious invasion is that which is accomplished through hypnosis
when Phadrig Amena uses the Horus Stone to hypnotize Mr. Isaac Josephus, a man sent
to spy on the comings and goings of Phadrig. Josephus, though technically an
Englishman, is not portrayed in the manner of the strong Anglo-Saxon since he is a Jew.
He is, instead, presented as ―a shabbily-dressed but well-to-do Jew trader‖ whose greed,
upon seeing the Horus Stone, an ancient jewel which can be used by its possessor to
place others in hypnotic trances, ultimately leads to his death (n.p.). He is, in the book‘s
terms, no Englishman, and the book‘s portrayal of him when he sees the stone is hardly
flattering, speaking as it does of his ―greedily‖ taking the stone in ―his fat, trembling
hand‖ (n.p.). It is therefore not surprising that this greedy Jewish money-lender is
overcome by the powers of Phadrig. On looking at the Horus Stone, he is hypnotized and
then ordered by Phadrig to take a revolver and kill himself. As a Jew, according to the
novel‘s logic, he simply lacks the moral wherewithal to resist the powers of the stone. He
is, for all intents and purposes, a foreigner, no Englishman at all. He is, moreover,
completely shamed as he undergoes what Victoria Margree insists, in another context, is
essentially a ―(mental) rape—one that establishes a person as passive and invade-able,
and therefore feminine, whether they be anatomically female or not‖ (67). He is the
antithesis of the powerful Englishman.
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Josephus‘s response to the Horus Stone stands in stark contrast to that of Niti
Marmion. By the time that Oscarovitch has the stone and attempts to use it on her, she
has already been elevated to the fourth dimension. With these powers, she is able to
withstand the stone and to turn the tables on Oscarovitch, who uses every power
available, including the attempted murder of her father, the professor, to make her his
own. Feigning interest, as she has been for some time by this point in the novel, in order
to trap him, she ultimately agrees to marry him. He is not to be satisfied, however.
Following the pattern in mummy fiction that David Seed identifies as ―arousal and
denial,‖ she literally drives him mad when he comes to the marriage bed only to discover
that his bride is no young woman but the corpse of Queen Nitocris (191). Niti/Nitocris,
working together as one, as they are, have absolute control of the situation and punish
Oscarovitch not only for his sins in this lifetime, but for the sins he committed in his
former incarnation as ―Menkau-Ra, Lord of War‖ (n.p.). She/They is/are judge, jury, and
executioner and he is powerless in her/their hands.
Oscarovitch‘s campaign to win Niti is just as much a story of invasion as any of
the other examples of invasion we have looked at in this novel. But it is an especially
heinous attack as it, despite Oscarovitch‘s claims to the contrary, not a tale of love, but of
lust: even if it takes rape to satisfy his desire, Oscarovitch is prepared to go the distance.
To win his prize, Oscarovitch attempts to cross both mental and physical borders. He
uses his charms to attempt to win her over, and when he is not convinced this is enough,
he takes out the Horus Stone to control her mind and effect a willingness on her part to
marry him. His ultimate goal is sexual penetration. Niti/Nitocris, however, as powerful
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women and representatives of two empires, ancient Egypt and the British Empire, are
able to overcome him. By linking the character of Niti with her former incarnation as
queen, Griffith is able to demonstrate an affinity with an earlier empire and thereby to
establish his British characters as successors of another great empire and fit to rule.
Oscarovitch is doomed to failure, however, for as a representative of an enemy of longstanding—Russia—he cannot possibly hope to gain ascendancy since the Russian empire
is constructed of a lesser breed that cannot hope to compete with its betters.
There are in these stories, and in this one in particular, occasions in which the
typical British characteristic is strained almost to the breaking point. These occasions
involve those aspects of Englishness which, as Bradley Deane phrases it, contradict ―the
oppositions that typically structure British identity: science/magic,
Christianity/paganism, rationality/superstition, modernity/antiquity, colonizer/colonized,
and, at times, masculinity/femininity‖ (402). The departure from the norm of these
identities is largely based on the metaphysical reality of the novel—namely, the existence
of a world in which reincarnation, the ability to transverse time and space freely and the
ability to kill through one‘s will alone. According to Deane‘s paradigm, the British
subjects and the foreign others on occasion find themselves occupying the space defined
as that belonging to the other. Professor Marmion and Niti, for example, are not
practicing Christians but believers in a faith that does not believe in the forgiveness of
sins but instead believes that sins must be paid in full in a multitude of lifetimes. The
science/magic and modernity/antiquity continuums are also somewhat strained.
Professor Marmion is a mathematician and physicist, but his abilities go beyond any
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known science today to the point that what he is able to do seems like magic. Whether it
is science or magic, however, is hard to say. On the side of magic is the idea that the
professor‘s powers are given to him by Nitocris in the fourth dimension. The idea of
science has credence, nonetheless, in that what he accepts from the queen is ―Perfect
Knowledge‖ (n.p.). The professor, in other words, is able to wield the power he does
because of an incredibly advanced scientific knowledge. It just looks like magic to the
uninitiated because the science of it is not understood.26 Phadrig makes the same point
when Oscarovitch asks him about Professor Marmion‘s powers, telling him that ―‗there
are no miracles . . . only the results of higher knowledge than that which they who see
them possess‖ (n.p.). Framed in this way, the abilities of Phadrig, the professor, and Niti
are nothing more than scientific knowledge. They have attained knowledge that the
majority of human beings do not. It is not magic; it is science. Viewed as such, the
professor and Niti fall firmly on the side of Britishness, but so does Phadrig. These are
rational human beings, the book argues, in touch with a higher form of knowledge than
most of us possess. At the same time, it ―[blurs]‖ the distinctions between Briton and
foreigner of which Deane speaks: first because the science looks like magic, not like the
science of the popular imagination; and second, because it places the British and the
foreigner in essentially the same place philosophically. As such, the distinction between
Briton and foreigner begins to disappear. The result of this blending –of the rational and
scientific with the magical and occult—is a new kind of Briton, one who can understand
26
Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke expressed the same idea when he asserted ―that to outsiders—and
with respect to real science most of us are outsiders—a sufficiently advanced technology would be
indistinguishable from magic‖ (Alkon 6).
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what it means to be English while at the same time incorporating ideas and powers from
beyond the borders. The British, the book suggests, are still the best, but they are made
better by control of powers once considered completely foreign. The outside world is
creeping in, but it is still the British who wield the power and save a world in danger.
The magical is thus subsumed under the rationality of science and gives readers access to
its wonders in this way.
The last of the invasion mummy narratives, Griffith‘s, The Romance of Golden
Star, is a tale of another sort, for this story is a tale which sympathetically relates the
story of invasion from the viewpoint of the colonized other taking back what was taken
from him by an invading force from over the sea. In this narrative we see an example of
colonialism as the British think they do it: ―good‖ colonialism, if you will, that is unlike
the ―bad‖ colonialisms of the modern day Belgians that Joseph Conrad decries in Heart of
Darkness. And we see an argument that ultimately tells us how colonialism, if it is to be
carried out at all, should be done—a colonialism that, as MacDonald argues in ―The
Propaganda of Civilization,‖ recognizes that even the ―lowest barbarian ― has a
―civilization‖ that he cherishes (460).
For this tale of Golden Star to do all of these things, though, it must inevitably
navigate a difficult course: it must, while proclaiming its anti-imperialist narrative
manage at the same time to favorably depict what was at the time of the novel‘s writing
the world‘s largest empire—the British Empire. This ambiguous stance is accomplished
through a story that at one and the same time portrays the evils of imperialism, while at
the same time depicting Britain and the British as exceptions to the rule as regards
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imperialism. The wickedness of imperialist policy is instead applied to the Spanish and
their colonization nearly four hundred years before the story‘s opening when they,
through brutal forces stripped away the emperor Vilcaroya‘s kingdom and took it for
themselves. In this story it is the Spanish who are the villains while Vilcaroya and his
British supporters who are the representative of all that is just and good.
It is a neat feat indeed how Griffith manages to portray imperialist Britain as
supporters of colonial rights and freedom all the while being guilty themselves of similar
indiscretions. Part of the way the author achieves this effect is by going back some five
hundred years ago to Pizarro‘s conquest of the Incas in 1532/3 and showing the effect of
the conquest on those conquered—telling the story, that is, from Vilcaroya‘s point of
view. The story, for the most part, penned supposedly by Vilcaroya himself, reveals a
land torn by royal conflict as Atahualpa and Huáscar battle for the throne. Into this mix
then comes the Spanish Pizarro and his men who take advantage of the civil unrest and
then loot the land to satisfy their lust for gold. Vilcaroya, in telling his story, does not
express much venom in his depiction of the civil unrest, devoting merely one line to
speaking of the ―traitor‘s knife‖ which killed the legitimate Incan emperor (29). The
discussion of the wrongs of the Spanish, however, is far more involved. The Spaniards,
those ―‗bearded strangers from the north,‘‖ are marked not only as racially different from
the Incas, but as being less moral, less noble than the Incas whom they opposed (29).
They are, to return once again to the infection metaphor, carriers of filth, as becomes
obvious when one of Vilcaroya‘s first supporters, Tupac, tells Vilcaroya of others
―‗whose blood has flowed pure from the olden times, unpolluted by a single stain of
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Spanish dirt‘‖ (53). Racially, that is, the book argues for a theory of characters based on
race and carried within the blood. The Spanish are despicable and breeding will out. The
Spanish, as the story develops, are, according to Vilcaroya‘s description of them, greedy,
cowardly, and hard masters enslaving the Incan race. They are so hated, in fact, that the
order is given that ―‗every hacienda, whose master is a Spaniard, [should] be given to the
flames,‘‖ though ―‗no one else [is to] be injured‘‖ (223). The justice of this portrayal,
moreover, is made especially clear not only by the support of Vilcaroya‘s British
followers in his quest for the taking back of his empire, but in Ruth Djama‘s portrayal of
them as ―‗those brutes of Spaniards‘‖ (55).
The British gain points as justice-loving, fair-minded people in this story in a
number of ways. They do this in the first place by seeing the justice of Vilcaroya‘s
position, essentially equating their position in Britain with Vilcaroya‘s position. This
idea is in keeping with their view of themselves as fair-minded people, an idea expressed
both in the modern bestseller on the subject of Englishness by Kate Fox as well as
MacDonald‘s 1907 study of imperialism from the Labour party‘s point of view, Labour
and the Empire. In the opening chapter of this latter source, MacDonald, in his review of
colonialism, manages both to disparage the Spanish and Portuguese method of colonial
conquest while at the same time humbly depicting Britain‘s colonial practice in those
early days of colonization as far more humane as a result of Britain‘s ―first failures in
commercial adventures‖ (4). Britain is depicted in her imperial conquests as a simple
nation out to establish trade partners, not willing to kill for gold as the Spanish and
Portuguese. British moral superiority adds additional weight to the pro-British stance.
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Unlike the ―brutish‖ Spaniards who only exploit their colonists, making slaves of the
Incas in Peru, the British, with the exception of Dr. Laurens Djama, the man responsible
for resurrecting Vilcaroya, are an honest, freedom-loving people. They are people of
good character, honest, sympathetic, and courageous. They are, moreover,
knowledgeable in the modern ways of warfare and social practices. Ruth Djama, whom
Vilcaroya knows first as nurse and mother and later falls in love with, renaming her
Joyful Star in his own language, teaches him English (his new ―mother‖ tongue) and
acceptable social practices in modern society (one does not marry one‘s sister anymore,
for example). She also shows him how to treat modern English women, a subject which
we look at in more detail in the gender chapter. Professional soldier Captain Francis
Hartness (one can almost hear the echo of the ―frank heart‖ in his name) proves himself
to be a brave man, nothing at all like the ―trembling‖ Spanish cowards, as well as being a
man knowledgeable in the ways of modern warfare. The English in this case prove
themselves to be what they often claimed to be in those nations colonized by the
British—tutors of the unschooled masses, providing their special expertise to help those
less fortunate than themselves. Vilcaroya owes them everything—even his life provided
by the less than virtuous Laurens Djama. The English school Vilcaroya not only in
modern warfare but in mercy and propriety. They make him into the kind of ruler that
the British would have; they, in an odd way in this anti-imperialist tale, actually colonize
him: while he is able to assert control in his own realm, he himself has been changed,
converted to the British way of doing things, then ultimately giving the British an indirect
way of exercising power. In this way, Vilcaroya‘s quest to take back his kingdom
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resembles British imperial ventures, since—like British imperialism—it is underwritten
by a belief in the superiority of western values. There are exceptions, of course, most
pointedly in the destruction of the Christian church (Roman Catholic, in this case, a fact
that would hardly disturb many protestant Britons) and replacing it with the worship of
the sun god, but by and large, the values are western: one does not marry one‘s sister;
women are to be treated with respect, not be traded like livestock; justice should be
tempered with mercy, and so forth—all values that Vilcaroya‘s English friends have
taught him, the willing pupil. In this way, British influence is spread and the purported
goal of British imperialism, the raising up of nations to the point where they can rule
themselves, is accomplished. Civilization advances as others adopt British values.
Strangely enough, it is this anti-imperialist tale that makes the imperialist impulse
clearest of all the mummy stories, for it is this story, while dealing with the guilt of
imperial conquest that makes clear the unrelenting drive to take other nations and make
them conform to British culture. It is, in fact, the antithesis of the invasion fear: rather
than having the culture of foreigners infect Britain, Britons, though they would never
express it this way, infect other nations, effectively turning the Golden Rule on its head
as they do to others before others can do to them. The justification, of course, is based on
the supposed superiority of British culture, which, it is ―their duty to extend . . . to less
fortunate races‖ (Anderson 23). The British were more rational, better managers of
business and government affairs, and, according to Thomas Babington Macaulay,
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possessors of a superior language and literature.27 Nevertheless, with the exception of
religion, the kingdom that Vilcaroya establishes is largely British in its values. There is
some evidence in the novel that Griffith understood that values differed according to
culture and time and that he believed that we ought to honor the values of other cultures
up to the point where those values clashed with ours, but there is little evidence that
Griffith held a deeper understanding and appreciation of those values. Allowing a culture
to govern itself or to establish its own religion might be all well and good, but incestuous
marriages of monarchs was to be deplored regardless of the right of a particular culture‘s
to hold such a value. Some things, he implies, are simply not negotiable. When the
values conflict, British morality and culture, again with the exception of the religious
values, must rule.
This issue of religion makes an interesting statement about a nation‘s right to
cultural sovereignty, as it also points to a sense of blindness at the same time and its
reason can probably best be explained by the biographical route. Griffith, according to
Sam Moskowitz, had been raised by a clergyman father until he was fourteen years old,
27
The Macaulay ―Minute on Education,‖ in considering the problem of finding a suitable language for the
education of early nineteenth century Indians, lays claim to the considerable value of English: ―How then
stands the case? We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mothertongue. We must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary
to recapitulate. It stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the West. It abounds with works of
imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us, --with models of every species
of eloquence, --with historical composition, which, considered merely as narratives, have seldom been
surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been equaled-with just and lively representations of human life and human nature, --with the most profound speculations
on metaphysics, morals, government, jurisprudence, trade, --with full and correct information respecting
every experimental science which tends to preserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to expand the
intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all
the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations‖ (par. 12).
75
but by the time he was in his twenties he had acquired a reputation ―as a prominent writer
on ―freethought‖ (8-10). This antipathy toward his own faith (or the faith in which he
was raised) may have allowed him a greater leeway in response to the faith of others: he
may not, fact, probably did not, because of his own conviction, consider the promulgation
of the gospel a matter of great importance in terms of it being something that he wished
to pass along and for this reason was willing to pass over the necessity of such cultural
transmission. The up side is that in allowing Vilcaroya to cling to his own faith, he
makes a case for the cultural sovereignty of other nations. At the same time, in nearly all
other facets of cultural life, he clings to his own ways of thinking, presenting them as did
so many other imperialists, as the better way of thinking and doing things.
Griffith was hardly unique in his loss of faith. The image of a triumphant
scientism overcoming religious faith is so well known as to have become a truism.
Nevertheless, this view of things is hardly universal. The late-Victorian and Edwardian
periods were a time of great missionary zeal with the British populace, with organizations
like the London Missionary Society, the organization which sent out David Livingstone,
to points all over the globe (Buxton 12). The point here is that despite Griffith‘s
willingness to allow such cultural sovereignty to Vilcaroya and his people, the passion for
the promulgation of British culture is quite evident here. Unlike Christianity apparently,
the worship of the sun did not offend Griffith and he therefore allows it as an exception in
the ideal culture he establishes for his fictional creation.
The position that Griffith takes in his reconstruction of society such as he does
allows him, I would argue, the possibility of experimenting with his own concept of a
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more ideal society. Just as the tale of Pharos and Nitocris offer us a view of the danger
posed by societies who might well prove dangerous in the time of uneasy alliances,
Golden Star offers us an opportunity to see how a society, ruled by a man of integrity, of
generosity, courage, who had the best interests of his people in mind, might, given
sufficient income and the best of British ideals, develop into a nation. The people‘s own
dress, religion, are important as part of their cultural identity; this freedom from the backbreaking and/or emotionally stultifying labor is overseen through the establishment of
one of their own as ruler. Fair labor practices, opportunities for self- identity in dress
and religion, and sufficient income equal a happier populace.
This sort of practice is
exactly the sort of thing that MacDonald believed represented the best of British
imperialism. In a lecture delivered to the West London Ethical Society in 1901, he
speaks of the ―one hopeful chapter in all our imperial history‖ which follows this sort of
plan—that in the British relations with Basutoland, where, he remarks, ―[w]e have
allowed the chiefs to govern, our representatives being advisers,‖ being careful to ―have
kept out drink and the white men excepting a few missionaries and legitimate traders‖
(―Propaganda‖ 466). The ideal for the British role in the colonies that MacDonald here
espouses is one where the British operate in an advisory capacity, working as ―an
influence rather than an authority, a light rather than a goad, reason rather than law‖
(―Propaganda‖ 467).
Ideal society is an issue of importance in all of the stories we have examined here.
For the most part, there is a recognition of the importance of national identity: what it
means to be an inhabitant of a particular nation or culture. The ideal is seen in these
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stories where it is a Britain that is in danger of attack by the very nature of the concern
that the particular attack poses, whether that danger is seen as a threat to national identity
by small numbers of outsiders piercing the borders of national identity by their very
presence or by the threat of loss of life. Ideal society seems to fall, for the most part,
within the bounds of the British way of life. Those things promoting that way of life are
good, those opposing it, dangerous. There is even, as we have seen, a cultural bias
blinding the most liberal-thinking of writers in the tale of Vilcaroya‘s conquest. Guilt, no
doubt, plays a role here. Pharos tells us the story of invasion from the imperialists‘ point
of view as victim, all the while, indicating that such an invasion might indeed be justified.
Nitocris primarily examines the invasion story from the more traditional point of view
when industrialized nations face off against one another, bringing in the colonies in the
persons of the British as re-incarnated Egyptians as well as Queen Nitocris herself in the
fourth dimension. But even here, the status of ancient Egypt is parallel in power to the
modern industrialized nation, especially to Britain itself. The story of Golden Star,
however, tells the story from the point of view of the colonized, a tale where a small
invasion force takes on a much bigger opponent and wins back that which was taken
from it in the first place. Here the reason for guilt, though effectively transposed to the
Spanish, nevertheless makes clear the travesty that occurs when one nation seeks to
enforce its will on a native population while at the same time undermining its message by
the colonization of Vilcaroya himself.
The story that emerges from these narratives is a complex one: imperialism in
these stories is to some extent supported but never without the wholesale guilt of
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imperialism that applies when two unequal bodies face off against one another.
Transference of the opposition from modern to ancient civilization, of course, works to
even the playing field more just as the existence of occult powers counteracts the superior
military technology of the colonizing force. Espionage and guerilla warfare, armed with
occult power, even out. Once again, smallness wins.
These stories, as should be obvious by now, are all about empire, about its
justification and its peril, about sources, and about guilt. Britain, these stories tell us, has
engaged in a questionable practice. They are not, as Golden Star tells us, as bad as the
Portuguese or the Spanish, but they leave the native Briton, if he bothers to think about it,
with a sense that all is not well in Camelot. Something is wrong. And despite their best
efforts to camouflage it, to reason their way out of it, they are at fault.
Or, at least, that is one way the story could be told. There is, at the same time, a
genuine pride in British imperialism in these stories as well. The picture of British
culture and the British race that emerges is one that suggests that they, the both of them,
are the best in the world. Coming into another nation, crossing its borders, was not so
much invasion as it was relief aid. Inferior nations and races were benefitted by this
connection with the Brits. Schools in India, better governance in Egypt, British manners,
British culture—these were the advantages Britain offered. Colonization was not
oppression, but service.
Both sides of the coin, both pride and guilt, are present in these stories. Pride
results in stories of justification, guilt in tales of feared invasion. The mix, the ambiguity,
is the result. Authors of these tales by trying out the problem, explore it, experiment with
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possibilities and offer voice to the dreams of empire. The end result is a picture of
ambivalence, a nation proud and trapped in its power.
The Crisis of Masculinity in Mummy Narratives
The roles that men and women ought to play in a modern society were hotly
contested in fin de siècle Great Britain. The New Woman of the nineties urged greater
freedom in both the legal and the political realms and took to dressing herself in
―rational‖ dress that resembled men‘s trousers28; suffragettes in the early twentieth
century, having despaired of the efficacy of non-militant action to achieve the vote, took
to the streets, marching and throwing stones, interrupting meetings and even going so far
as to commit arson. Edith Milner, a high-ranking member of the politically conservative
Primrose League, argued against the extension of suffrage for women, as did the
Women‘s National Anti-Suffrage League. Newspapers and magazines were full of news
and letters to the editor discussing the situation, some arguing for the passage of a bill to
give women the vote, others vigorously opposing such measures. Meanwhile, journalists,
politicians, and anxious citizens voiced their concerns about what they saw as a
degenerating masculinity following the difficulties with recruitment in the Boer War:
Englishmen were, according to such sources, no longer the sturdy stock that had created
an empire. Everything, as the anonymous poet of ―A Bachelor‘s Growl‖ expressed it,
was ―topsy-turvy now‖ as ―the men [were] bedded at ten,/While the women [sat] up, and
28
David Rubinstein describes ―rational dress‖ as ―a kind of knickerbocker outfit which was a
commonsensical alternative to long, trailing skirts, but could only be worn in defiance of social orthodoxy
and at the risk of violence‖ (18).
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smoke[d] and sup[ped]/ In the Club of the Chickless Hen‖ (qtd. in Marks, Bicycles,
Bangs, and Bloomers 17).
A similar concern with gender roles and masculine degeneration is evident in
mummy stories that were published between the end of the nineteenth century and the
beginning of the First World War. Stalwart men and submissive women, reflecting the
conservative values of many from an earlier time, to be sure, still appeared in the pages of
these tales, but tears were beginning to appear in the social fabric as women campaigned
vigorously for change. Women in many of these tales were becoming more powerful,
some even dangerous, and many of the men in the tales were at the same time being
portrayed in weakness or in feminized roles; yet the manner in which this apparent shift
in power was accomplished managed, for the most part, to rescue a failing masculinity
from what seemed to traditionalists to be an overpowering womankind. A threatened
traditional masculine power required a response for those who felt endangered by this
increasing feminine power. Mummy fiction provided that response.
If men felt endangered by the women‘s movement, it is hardly surprising: there
was, at least for some, a real animosity between the sexes. In one of the multitude of
New Woman novels published in the last decade of Victoria‘s reign, Isabella Ford‘s On
the Threshold, one character, Miss Burton, a thirty-year-old impoverished teacher living
―in a single room,‖ speaks, according to David Rubinstein, ―for many of the real and
fictional new women of the period,‖ when she says:
―I hate, how I hate men! Think of my life and the life of hundreds and
hundreds of women like me! We cannot get paid, we cannot walk home at
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night from our work in peace, we cannot, if we have a father such as mine
was, live our own lives or even think our own thoughts; we can do nothing
but sit and smile and endure, all because of men! (qtd. in Rubinstein 27)
A Mrs. Hobson, a speaker at a debate at the Pioneer Club, reported in the Sunday,
October 28, 1894 issue of Reynolds‘s Newspaper , expressed the sentiment even more
forcefully. Arguing ―‗[t]hat the attitude of some. . . advanced women towards men is
calculated to injure the best interests of women,‖ she opined that ―‗though the total
extinction of man might be desirable, such was not yet a possibility, and meantime
woman should both tolerate and educate him‘‖ (―New Woman‘s Attitude to Man‖ n.p.).
What makes this avowed interest in the destruction of the male sex even more shocking is
the fact that it was spoken by a woman whose attitude toward men was relatively tolerant,
for, according to the newspaper report, she believed that ―[m]an as a sex was not
unworthy‖ (―New Woman‘s Attitude to Man‖ n.p.).
The cause of this vitriol, of course, is undisputed: men were the privileged sex,
with both legal and social advantages. Men in the early years of the 1890s had greater
―access‖ to divorce than women, despite women‘s greater ―need to escape the domination
of a tyrannical spouse‖ (Rubinstein 52) . Men also held the legal right to the children in a
marriage, even after the passage of the Guardianship of Infants Act in 1886. Under the
rules of this law, though a woman could ―for the first time‖ be ―given the right of joint or
sole guardianship of her infant children after her husband‘s death, their religion,
education and upbringing were still to be determined by him‖ (Rubinstein 53). Women
were also limited in their admission to higher education, with universities like Oxford and
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Cambridge not admitting women to degree granting programs ―until 1920 at Oxford and
1948 at Cambridge‖ (Marks 92). Career opportunities were also limited. Though some
few women did manage to do quite well even in the nineties, the conventional wisdom of
the time said that if a woman were not married, she ought to stay at home and tend to her
father, ―especially if the mother had died‖ (Jalland 134).
But for men at the time, even small changes seemed threatening. Women had
made some advances. A man could no longer beat his wife, nor, after the passage of the
1840 Cochrane case, ―restrain his wife by confining her in the conjugal home‖
(Rubinstein 54). Educational and occupational opportunities had also improved, with
some institutions of higher learning opening their doors to women, leading even as early
as the nineties to women in positions of authority within the university. Unmarried
working-class women had ―greater employment opportunities outside the home . . . ,
especially in factories and domestic service where single women predominated,‖ though
the middle class woman was largely restricted to teaching as the only socially acceptable
profession (Jalland 130). Problems, however, resulted when women threatened the
masculine workplace. The situation of male clerks of the late nineteenth century is a case
in point, where men were not only forced to compete with women for positions, but had
their masculine identities threatened in the process. The problem, as Geoffrey Spurr
explains it, was that ―clerking was often suggested as the ideal vocation for the ‗New
Woman‘ of the age because of its sheltered distance in the office from the ever-present
moral dangers attributed to dealings with the general public and, more significantly,
because of its genteel nature‖ (280). ―Working as a clerk,‖ it was argued, ―would not
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cause a woman to lose ‗those feminine graces, of dignity, of delicacy, or reserve, which
are the essential characteristics of an English gentlewoman‖ (Spurr 280-81). To make
matters worse, women clerks were driving down wages: ― J. C. Arrandale, a [male] clerk
writing to Tit-Bits in 1887, suggested that women should stick to occupations where they
would damage neither the pay of men nor their masculine identities, such as ‗millinery,
dressmaking, under-clothing making, embroidering, shop assistants, etc.‘‖ (qtd. in Spurr
281).
Women also challenged paternalistic assumptions by engaging in activities that
were deemed either unladylike or detrimental to reproductive health. The idea that
women were to refrain from exercise in order to maintain their ability to bear children is
one such assumption which the New Woman challenged. If young women were to be
allowed to participate in study or exercise, both of which were considered ill advised by
traditional medicine of the time, a doctor‘s permission note might be required stating that
such activity would not harm the young woman‘s health. New Women engaged in both
sorts of activity—mental and physical. Cycling was very popular and allowed women
access to the world about them and associations with student organizations for those
enrolled in university programs meant that they could do without male escort, and the
wearing of ―rational‖ rather than conventional dress meant that women might enjoy the
freedom of movement enjoyed by their male counterparts, an equivalency long desired by
many women of the period. In these ways, women were beginning to enjoy some of the
same privileges as men.
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Perhaps most disturbing of all, however, were expressions of physical violence by
a frustrated womankind. Most of the violence that we are familiar with today, of course,
was that which occurred with the suffragettes beginning in 1906, but there were signs of
an expected eruption of violence before this date in depictions of violent women in
cartoons and fiction and, occasionally, of violent acts by women in the streets of London,
as in the case of an attack in July 1895 by New Woman Mrs. Alice Madeleine
Wackerbarth who accosted another woman, a pedestrian named Florence Blyth, who got
in her way one day when the former was riding her bicycle (Illustrated Police News n.p.).
Such acts by a sex supposedly docile did not make any sense to those holding to
traditional beliefs about women. But women were changing and something had to be
done (or at least, such was the idea of those opposed to those changes). Letters to the
editor, jokes and cartoons ridiculing these ―New Women‖ and fictional stories were all
part of this effort to restore ―sanity‖ to a world gone awry. Mummy stories were part of
this effort. Though undoubtedly such an effort was not consciously undertaken as the
primary motive in writing such tales, the stories nonetheless played their part in restoring
the masculine world to its, by the traditionalist way of thinking, ―rightful‖ place.
The women‘s movement had, if one is to judge by the reaction to it, emasculated
men and deprived them of their ―rightful‖ place. Mummy fiction attacks this problem, in
part, by demonstrating male power as ordinary men meet, fall in love with, and dominate
the advantageously placed women resurrected into a modern world. By so doing,
ordinary men of the present are able to reclaim male authority and power as they
dominate women above their station, thereby accruing to themselves the power of those
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women in much the same way that a person can lay claim to superiority in sport by
defeating a champion. The superior status in these stories is usually a matter of royal
blood. Even as far back as 1840, when Théophile Gautier first published his short story,
―Le pied de Momie,‖ the mummy the narrator of the tale meets and with whom he falls in
love is a princess, and a good number of the mummies are either of royal birth or of
higher social status. A number of these women hold a political position, but they pose no
threat for the traditional male because they themselves also hold traditional values where
a woman is subservient to the man she loves.29 Others, however are not so harmless:
Queen Tera, in Bram Stoker‘s 1903 edition of The Jewel of Seven Stars and Queen
Nitocris and her reincarnated form Niti Marmion in George Griffith‘s The Mummy and
Miss Nitocris are both dangerous women, capable of great destruction, the former
destroying all those surrounding her except for the narrator, the latter two killing the chief
villain of the novel through the exercise of their will alone, ―allow[ing] him,‖ by the
novel‘s conclusion, ― to die,‖ but only after significant torture. Yet even these tales
eventually support masculine superiority as both Tera and Nitocris/Niti, as we shall see,
are domesticated through marriage, though this does not happen in the case of Tera until
the 1912 edition of Jewel30 .
29
Women of this sort include the temporarily resurrected mummy in Grant Allen‘s tale of ―My New Year‘s
Eve Among the Mummies,‖ the governor‘s daughter Atma in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s short story, ―The
Ring of Thoth,‖ and a copy cat character Amaris in George Griffith‘s essentially plagiarized tale of the
Doyle story, ―The Lost Elixir;‖ two meek resurrected mummies, one, named Iras, who appears in Mrs. H.
D. Everett‘s novel of the same name and George Griffith‘s Golden Star, the five hundred year old Incan
empress who has been resurrected along with her brother Vilcaroya in The Romance of Golden Star; and
the ancient Egyptian queen, Ma-mee, who, though traditionally prone to surrender herself to the man she
loves, is nevertheless able to rise to the occasion when that man is subjected to attack.
30
The situation with Jewel is an unusual case. Though Stoker undoubtedly wrote the 1903 edition, the
author of subsequent revisions in the 1912 edition is uncertain. Lisa Hopkins argues that another hand was
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The mummy stories of this period, though they largely work to restore the male
dominant order do so in such a way as to represent the wide range of men and women of
the period, thus demonstrating both the ideals of tradition and the challenges to it. The
majority of the women in these stories behave according to the traditional ideal of
femininity, though the actions of some of these female characters are so timid as to be
almost unbelievable to modern readers. Other, more assertive female characters, though
they may initially seem beyond the pale of acceptable behavior, ultimately show
themselves to be more deferential to the men in their lives than might be expected of such
powerfully placed women. The most timid of the women in these stories and thus the
most amenable to traditional males are Mrs. H. D. Everett‘s Iras, and George Griffith‘s
Incan princess Golden Star. In these stories, power is firmly in male hands as these
submissive women, despite their high socio-political positions, bow to male superiority.
Everett‘s tale, Iras, a Mystery, is both love story with fragile lovers and a fairy
tale along the lines of ―Sleeping Beauty.‖ In this story, the eponymous Iras, the daughter
of a powerful priest from ancient Egypt, is given the choice to either marry a man of her
own time whom she does not love or else be placed in suspended animation until the man
she is destined to love awakens her at some undisclosed time in the future. Iras chooses
love and is placed in suspended animation until Ralph Lavenham, an archaeologist,
awakens her when he lifts the lid off her sarcophagus. The two immediately fall in love
likely at work in the latter edition, citing the ―state of Stoker‘s health at the time of the 1912 revision‖ as
evidence (139). She, nevertheless, acknowledges the possibility of Stoker‘s work in the second edition,
citing David Glover, who, in his introduction to Oxford University Press‘s edition of the book, argues that
―‗so much of the 1912 ending is implicit in the 1903 original, that the question of authorship ultimately
becomes irrelevant‘‖ (139).
88
and marry, but Iras‘s life force is quickly expended as the pendants from the magical
necklace she wears fall off, causing her first to no longer be visible to anyone except for
Lavenham and then to ultimately die. The remainder of the story is his attempt to
discover what has happened to her.
In its extreme version of social gender norms of the time, the novel not only
portrays a paternalistic world in which severe limitations are imposed on women, but it
also explores the attendant strain placed upon men as a result. Iras‘s story is especially
interesting because she is so much at the mercy of men in her life that she hardly dares to
make a decision for herself. In Iras‘s world, men are all powerful, beginning with Savak,
the priest who desired her for his wife in ancient Egypt and put her in suspended
animation and continuing in the future in her relationship with her beloved, Lavenham.
Her first words to Lavenham are especially significant as she recognizes him as her
superior, calling him ―‗my lord‘‖ and ―‗my master‘‖ (91; 93). Her inferior status to
Lavenham is further emphasized in the way that she is denied the status of full adulthood,
being referred to as a child numerous times. When she is first awakened by Lavenham,
she looks at him ―with a sweet half-comprehension, like a child at once perplexed and
confiding,‖ and she trusts him ―with a child‘s confidence‖ to explain all the mysteries of
the new world in which she has awakened (150). She is an innocent in this new world
and, in a manner similar to the plight of many women of this time, completely dependent
upon Lavenham, who must do everything for her: feed her, clothe her, name her, and pay
for her passage to Scotland where they may marry more quickly than in England. She is,
as far as possible, closed off from the outside world, doing no more than is absolutely
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necessary. Although she can speak to Lavenham and be understood because of the love
the two bear toward one another, she cannot speak to the rest of the population. They
live in an enclosed space where the outer world does not intrude. She comes out of the
womb of the sarcophagus, delivered by Lavenham who serves as her midwife, and is
delivered into another enclosed space, that of Lavenham‘s apartment on G Street in
London. Once she is born, he is both mother and lover to her, and he protects her
absolutely, conversing with her, protecting her from the threat of Savak the priest who
has cursed her and her future lover. Though she speaks in her own tongue, Lavenham
understands her as though she is speaking to him in English because, he later relates, his
―ear was so attuned to the soul of her speech‖ that he heard her meaning rather than the
language in which it was said (91). With others, however, she cannot so easily converse,
resulting in her hesitation, Lavenham relates, ―to address any one but myself‖ (91). The
result of this language barrier is a further insulation of their relationship, which thus
requires additional reliance upon Lavenham to deal with the rest of the world outside
their little sphere. Thus, when they go to Scotland, it is Lavenham who must make the
arrangements for the trip, buy her clothing fitter for the cooler climate and the more
modern time. When they arrive in Scotland and Lavenham suggests she accompany him
to some shops, she pleads ignorance, asking Lavenham only to ―‗send what is needful to
make me appear as you wish‘‖ as she does not ―‗speak [his] language‘‖ nor understand
the customs of this strange, new land (124). In this way, Iras keeps herself in the
background, away from the prying eye, in an extreme version of nineteenth-century
norms of modesty and chastity, as she depends upon Lavenham to take care of her. She
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is shut off from all society except for his. She is a prisoner of her fear of this new land,
shut off by that fear and by the language barrier. It is no wonder, then, that eventually
she begins to fade further and further into obscurity as the cursed necklace which she
wears takes away her life force as each of the seven pendants upon it falls or is snatched
away until eventually she dies. She has no voice, no interaction with others in this new
culture, and she further shuts herself off from contact with others by wearing a veil which
not only hides her face, but exoticizes her at the same time that it expresses her chastity
and humility. As the pendants fall from her necklace, she seems to fade away until only
Lavenham can see her and, once the final pendant drops, she dies and even Lavenham
cannot see her any more except as ―the dried-up corpse‖ she has become. The novel thus
works in contradictory ways, for, as it supports paternalism on the one hand as it depicts
Lavenham as protector and provider, it argues against that paternalism which ultimately
destroys both Iras and Lavenham.
The question, of course, remains whether or not the story Lavenham tells of Iras
really occurred, as Lavenham claimed, or whether it was merely the tale of a madman as
other characters in the tale seemed to think. Either way, the tale reveals significant
information about Iras and Lavenham. If Iras, for example, is regarded as real, her
passivity with Lavenham must be seen as the result of a choice made out of fear of her
new environment that left her with a sense of alienation. On the other hand, if
Lavenham‘s interactions with the mummy were only a delusion, then the passivity
becomes quite understandable as his relationship with her was a relationship with a lifesized doll on which he has projected his own psychotic delusions based on his
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understanding of properly gendered behavior. Especially remarkable, however, is the
fact that it is conceivable that a living woman could be so passive that the realization that
she had never existed might make just as much sense as if she were a living being.
Despite Iras‘s passivity, whatever its ultimate cause, she still manages to have a
tremendous impact on Lavenham, making of him, if his story is true, both an ideal sort of
man taking care of his wife while at the same time casting him in a feminine role as he
takes over duties that would have typically been delegated to the wife of the era. If one
takes Lavenham‘s story at his word, he is successful up to a point as a male figure in the
manner in which he cares for Iras, though there are tasks he completes, as we shall
shortly see, that are more typically given to women. As a man, the nostalgic ideals of the
time would dictate that he would serve as a protector of womanhood, being something
like a knight errant protecting his lady. For a man to be regarded as a man, he had to be
capable of providing for his family—this was his role as the adult male. He would go out
into the world, his sphere, and earn the money to keep the family. He would also be
expected to protect that family as the stronger was to protect the weaker, as sixteen-yearold Alice M. Passman‘s prize-winning definition of manliness in the magazine Kind
Words for Young People claimed (Gale Document Number: EB1901498945).31 As a
provider, Lavenham does quite well. He is well off enough to be able to contact his bank
and make arrangements for the necessary funds to undertake a journey to Scotland with
31
Passman‘s definition defined manliness as consisting of ―nobleness, courage, [and] strength,‖ and added
that ―[i]t is often associated with personal beauty, and the protection vouchsafed by the stronger to the
weaker.‖ In its ―ideal perfection,‖ Passman concluded, manliness is ―sans peur and sans reproche‖
(without fear and without reproach).
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Iras. He also is able to pay for his apartment in advance while he is gone. He is
apparently a good money manager. Moreover, he has sufficient funds to purchase
clothing for Iras, an expense that could not have been imagined before she actually came
back to life. This success, however, is about the extent of his success. As a protector, he
ultimately fails, for Iras is ultimately overcome by the curse of the necklace and the spirit
of the priest Savak who does not want her relationship with Lavenham to survive.
Lavenham also fails in two other areas which we will discuss at a later point in this
chapter, namely in the question of his sanity and in the matter of his physical strength.
For the time being, however, let it suffice to say that his questionable sanity and his lack
of physical strength both place him in a position of a questionable masculinity.
Lavenham‘s masculinity, however, is rehabilitated to the extent that he shows
himself to be incompetent in some of the very occupations of femininity, such as when he
buys clothing for Iras in preparation for their marriage and honeymoon in Scotland. As
might be expected of a man of the time, Lavenham is quite ignorant of matters of female
dress, though, his author, Mrs. Everett, seems very well acquainted with such matters. In
her description of Lavenham‘s situation, she manages to both portray Lavenham as
masculine in his ignorance of female dress, while at the same time displaying the fashion
sense of a woman of the time. Everett depicts her hero in traditionally masculine terms in
this situation as she has him remark how he ― ‗knew nothing of women‘s fashions,‘‖
cementing his masculine identity as she has him claim preeminence in ignorance of
female fashion in the ― ‗length and breadth of London‘ (102). Even the manner in which
he becomes acquainted with feminine fashion is accomplished in such a way as to
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preserve his masculinity, for the only dress he notices up to this time comes to his
attention when listening to the ― ‗strictures‘‖ of another man on government policy.
Bored with this particular harangue, he stares ― vacantly‖ in a shop window at what he
says he ―think[s] is a paletot.‖
It is here, however, that gender lines become somewhat
blurred as a feminine interest in women‘s fashion appears in the loving detail of the
garment in the window, described as ―a long garment of brown cloth cut for a tall slender
figure. . . and bordered at all its edges with thick glossy fur,‖ which, he notes in an
uncharacteristically feminine tone, ―matched the dark tint of the fabric‖ (102). His
continued description of the accompanying ―turban head-gear‖ with its loving
description of a ―furred inner lining of grey and white,‖ further emphasizes a feminized
interest in women‘s clothing, despite, what I can only guess, was Everett‘s intent. The
hedging words and phrases go some way toward distancing Lavenham from feminine
knowledge of women‘s clothing, but the detailed description of the clothing in the
window seem nothing short of a lapse in the depiction of the manly man which Everett is
attempting to construct here. Nevertheless, it is clear that we are, if we follow the signs
Everett provides us in Lavenham‘s hesitant terminology, to see him as masculine and out
of his element.
Everett expands on the difficulty of a man out of his element in a woman‘s world
when she places Lavenham in the dress shop in Edinburgh and in the process
reemphasizes firmly established gender roles in which her hero performs admirably as a
properly ignorant man. The scene begins with discomfort and embarrassment as he finds
himself out of his element when, on entering the dress shop, he find himself ―the only
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male creature in a warehouse given over to women‘s needs‖ (124). He is obviously out
of place, a fact he sees reflected in the ―astonished face of the lady presiding over the
establishment‖ (124). To make matters worse, he cannot even, as the usual practice was,
take ―specimens‖ of fabric for Iras to approve, but must make the selections for her (125).
Instead, he had to ―wade as best I could through the printed lists and estimates laid before
me,‖ which were ―bristling‖ with unfamiliar terms, leaving him feeling ―utterly
incompetent‖ (125). Measurements were another difficulty. Not knowing Iras‘s size, he
had to pick one of the shop girls as an equivalent, though the one he picked, ―a tall girl all
bones and angles‖ was ―as unlike Iras as possible‖ (125). Simply put, Lavenham does
not know what he is doing, a fact, which the novel seems to suggest, is as it should be.
Despite the support evident for paternalism in this story as it places Lavenham in
a position of power while Iras, a woman of some social standing in ancient Egypt, is
reduced to such an extreme of passivity that it is conceivable that she never existed but
was only the figment of a deranged man‘s imagination, the novel might well be seen to
argue against that paternalism as it ultimately jeopardizes the very lives of its two chief
central characters, Iras and Lavenham. Paternalism kills Iras. In ancient Egypt she is
nothing more than a pawn, completely in the power of her father and then of Savak, the
priest who, when she does not return his love, puts her into a sleep for over a thousand
years and then hunts her and Lavenham down when she awakens. Lavenham, through
Iras‘s passivity, is likewise hurt by paternalism. Because of her extreme passivity,
Lavenham must do everything for her, which, in turn, means that few witnesses saw her.
The disappearing pendants from Iras‘s necklace function both as a literal, though
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magical, cause of her death and as a metaphor for the fact of her figurative disappearance
from life as a result of her extreme passivity. Had Iras been more assertive and less
passive, had she made more of an impression and not merely been what the men in her
life wished, she might have saved Lavenham from what more than anything caused harm
to his masculinity—the suspicion that he had lost his reason. By the novel‘s end, Iras has
perished and Lavenham is a broken man awaiting death. Neither can survive paternalistic
society. Thus, while the novel clearly places its male hero in a position of power in the
opening chapters of the book, by its end, even the man of the tale cannot survive the
paternalistic society in which he lives. Feminized more by his failing health and
perceived loss of reason, the story ultimate portrays the deadly consequences of
paternalism.
George Griffith‘s The Romance of Golden Star is probably more typical of the
sort of tale of the passive woman and strong male, but even here there is some suggestion
that some paternalistic attitudes must be changed for men and women to live together
harmoniously.
In this tale, Golden Star, despite the tale‘s name, is really only a minor
character. The main tale has to do with the resurrection of her brother, Vilcaroya, an
Incan king, resurrected by scientific means developed by Englishman Dr. Laurens Djama,
who raises an army and takes back his kingdom from the Peruvian government.
Vilcaroya is nursed back to health by Djama‘s sister, Ruth, with whom the Incan then
falls in love. Golden Star, an almost identical image of Ruth, though with a different
shade of hair color, is Vilcaroya‘s sister and wife, and her main purpose in this story is as
romantic object of affection. She is similar to Iras primarily in her excessive passivity,
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but in this story the excesses of paternalism are attenuated as Ruth Djama, a strong-willed
Englishwoman, re-educates the men in her life, thereby benefiting Golden Star as well.
Ruth and Golden Star represent two visions of womankind. Golden Star is the
extremely timid, child-like woman, completely dependent upon Ruth, who serves as her
mother following the former‘s resurrection into the new world in which she now lives.
Ruth, like Captain Francis Hartness, an English military advisor to Vilcaroya and by
book‘s end, Golden Star‘s husband, protects the childlike Golden Star. Golden Star,
more than anything else, is a victim. She accepts her circumstances and does not try to
argue against them, though she does make her wishes known to the extent that she makes
it clear that she has no wish to marry Laurens Djama since he frightens her. But she can
do nothing for herself, but must rely on others to protect her. She is, as the book makes
clear, a fearful child. When, for example, she first learns from Vilcaroya that she and he
are not to be husband and wife, she speaks to him ―in a voice that was half angry and half
fearful;‖ and when, one day, Djama, whom she knows wishes to marry her, she throws
―her arms round Ruth‘s neck, and . . . [clings] to her, trembling with fear, . . . looking
sideways at Djama with eyes fixed and wide open with terror‖ (155). Ruth, conversely,
is a modern woman, not afraid to speak up for herself. One day, for example, when she
finds Vilcaroya and Djama arguing over herself and Golden Star, she angrily tells
Vilcaroya, who had thought to bargain with her brother for Ruth‘s hand, ― ‗What! she
said, ‗Laurens give me to you, Vilcaroya! Don‘t you know yet that no one can give an
English girl away except herself, and that she only gives herself to the man she chooses
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of her own free will? Do you think I am a slave or a human chattel to be bartered away
like that? Nonsense!‘‖ (126).
Ruth and Golden Star, despite their difference, both manage to make the men in
their lives better, stronger people. Golden Star does this in the traditional manner of the
folk- or fairy-tale where the princess is the hero‘s reward. She is his property, he, her
protector. Ruth, on the other hand, is the woman of the future, insisting on her worth.
She does not insist, as the tale makes clear, on complete equality with her husband—he is
both king and her superior in marriage—but she will be treated with respect. In both
cases, men will retain their traditional positions of authority in their roles as husband, but
woman, at least in the case of Ruth, will insist upon greater respect than that formerly
afforded them. Of Golden Star‘s submissiveness to her husband there can be little doubt:
she has played the role of the submissive female to the point where she seems to be little
more than a child, completely dependent on those around her for protection. Ruth, an
assertive woman as we have seen, nevertheless, by her willingness to abide in most cases
by the will of Vilcaroya as he conducts his campaign to regain his kingdom, demonstrates
that she will be willing to follow his lead, as she does, in fact, in the marriage ceremony
when she appears to adopt his worship of the sun. Such a concession leaves little doubt
of Ruth‘s willingness to submit to her husband.
Grant Allen‘s comic short story, ―My New Year‘s Eve Among the Mummies,‖
examines the conflicting pulls of love and money in the marital relationship, casting the
male narrator in two conflicting roles, one which tears down his masculinity as he must
depend upon a rich, but unattractive woman financially, the other a relationship that
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restores his traditionally powerful position as a man. The first of these two relationships,
the one based on the narrator‘s economic need, is with Edith Fitz-Simkins, a plain, but
rich, English heiress. The other relationship is with the Princess Hatasou, who, every
thousand years or so, awaken s with her father and his court for a night of feasting and
celebration inside an Egyptian pyramid. The narrator‘s relationship with the first of these
women, Editha Fitz-Simkins, on holiday in Egypt with her family, is at one extreme of
the matrimonial spectrum—the strictly economic. In this relationship, Editha, were it not
for the narrator‘s sexual attractiveness, would hold all the power. She is smitten with
him, and he is smitten with her money. The father is not especially eager to have him
enter the family, but because of the scandal that would be caused if the two of them did
not marry—they have been flirting in such a way that not to marry, the narrator indicates,
would cause a scandal—he agrees to his daughter‘s wishes. The narrator, however, is
clearly only interested in the money. Editha is ―a valuable prospective property,‖ not a
woman he loves. He sneaks off one day ―to witness the seductive performances of some
fair Ghaw zi, the dancing girls of a neighbouring town,‖ and is struck by one in particular
who had ―[e]yes like two full moons; hair like Milton‘s Penseroso; movements like a
poem of Swinburne‘s set to action‖ (n.p.). He, however, is not free to enjoy such delights,
for somehow Editha finds out, even though he had given his guide, ―that rascal Dimitri
five piastres to hold his tongue‖ (n.p.). A fight ensues and later that evening the narrator
takes a walk in the evening in the desert and stumbles upon an entrance into an ancient
pyramid where he finds his true love, the princess Hatasou.
99
Editha functions in this tale like a nagging wife in whom the husband has ceased
to be interested and who does her best to make her man stay in line. His expectation of
economic dependence upon her gives her incredible power over him, though, as we shall
see, she does not ultimately triumph. In his position as suitor, as one who must make
himself attractive to his intended, he stands in the object position of traditional
femininity. He is a weakened masculine figure in this standing, which is caused by yet
another lack on his part with regard to traditional masculinity in that he has no economic
worth on his own, for he is, as he describes himself, ―a wanderer and a vagabond,‖ ―a
landless and briefless barrister,‖ dependent on his ―precarious earnings as a writer of
burlesque‖ (n.p.). As many another man in his circumstances has done, he thus turns to
marriage to a wealthy heiress as the solution to his problem, the only difficulty being her
lack of sexual desirability.
Though hardly a New Woman (the term had not yet come into use in 1878 when
this tale was published, though obviously the type was already extant to some degree)
Editha has much in common with the way such women were portrayed, particularly in
regard to her overbearing power over her man and her lack of sexual attractiveness. Two
pieces of evidence seem especially pertinent here, one a cartoon and another report on a
court case that took place some years later, both of which reflected broader societal
concerns of the changing roles of men and women in a world where women seemed to be
gaining the upper hand while men were becoming less than they had once been. The
cartoon, entitled simply ―The New Woman,‖ features a physically imposing woman
named Mrs. Strongmind confronting her husband, a much smaller man, on his coming
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home after an absence of some time. The husband, whom she calls ―Jarge,‖ stands
meekly before her, his hands folded over his groin in a defensive posture, protecting his
threatened masculinity. Her arms akimbo, she speaks roughly to him: ―‗Jarge,‘
exclaimed Mrs. Strongmind, ‗come in! You‘ve
been out there long enough.‘‖ She then threatens to
lock him out of his own home: ―‗If you don‘t want
to get locked out for the night you‘d better move
yourself!‘‖ Jarge, feeling his position as the man
of the house roughly used, tries to gain the upper
hand with his wife, but his words are painfully
insufficient, indicating that he has already lost the
battle: ―‗My dear,‘ expostulated Jarge mildly, ‗as
the husband of a woman of your superior
Figure 1
attainments and high personal worth, don‘t you
think I ought to be treated with a little more
respect!‘‖ Jarge is clearly not going to win this battle: his mild expostulation beseeches
his wife for respect, but does not command it. He is a little man, his body indicating his
lack of moral courage.
The court case is that of a Mr. Thomas Roberts, a man similarly cowed by an
overbearing wife. According to the report of the judicial proceedings in the Saturday,
October 19, 1895 issue of the Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle titled ―The
‗New‘ Woman and the Old,‖ Roberts had been brought to court over the matter of a £2
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debt that his wife had promised a workman but had not paid. The exchange in court
between Roberts and Abinger, the ―plaintiff‘s legal representative,‖ and Judge French,
the presiding judge in the case, makes clear how things stood between Roberts and his
wife and just what society expected of him:
―I won‘t admit anything,‖ he [Roberts] said, resolutely, when called on to
give his evidence; ―absolutely I won‘t admit nothing whatever.‖ ―But you
own the house,‖ suggested Mr. Abinger, the plaintiff‘s legal
representative. ―Not a brick of it,‖ replied Roberts stolidly. ―But your
wife gave the orders, didn‘t she?‖ ―How in thunder can I control my
wife?‖ answered the husband. ―You can stop her from giving any more
orders,‖ said his Honour. Thomas looked at the Judge with a wondering
expression in his eyes, and after a few moments of cogitation put one hand
to an ear in the form of a trumpet and whispered, ―Did I hear your Honour
aright? Stop her! Ah, Judge, Judge, you don‘t know my wife. I‘d like to
see the man who could stop her.‖ (―The New Woman and the Old‖ n.p.)32
Like the mild-mannered ―Jarge‖ in the cartoon in Figure 1, Roberts has lost the battle of
the sexes. Mrs. Roberts owns the house and has control of the family purse. Roberts, to
hear him tell it, has nothing, ―not even tuppence to help to bury himself [sic]‖ (n.p.). The
court expects him, whether or not he has legal ownership of the property, to take control
of his wife and prevent her from carrying on as she has been. She, on the other hand,
32
The court here, of course, is making the assumption as Mr. Brownlow told Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist
that a wife is acting under the direction of the husband. Mr. Bumble responds in much the same fashion as
Roberts does above, saying, ―‗If the law supposes that, . . . the law is a ass—a idiot‘‖ (354).
102
described previously in the article as a wife who ―seems to have a good deal more ‗go‘ in
her nature than the husband,‖ apparently will not be ruled by her husband. The social
order of the time undoubtedly expected that a husband would control his wife, but such
was not possible for Mr. Roberts. His wife was simply too much for him.
The narrator of Allen‘s tale is in a somewhat similar position to the examples
given here. He is very much under the thumb of his fiancée as both Jarge and Roberts are
in these examples. Both women in these examples are strong-minded individuals,
unafraid of acting to achieve their will, and both men in these examples are powerless in
the face of that expression of power. With Mrs. Strongmind, part of the power is in her
imposing physical presence. More important, however, is the women‘s strength of will.
Both men are thoroughly beaten by the more powerful personalities of their wives. With
Allen‘s narrator, a similar situation holds. Though there is no indication that the narrator
in this tale is physically dwarfed by his fiancée, Editha, he is nevertheless threatened just
as much by her forceful personality as she subjects him to an admittedly deserved
harangue over his behavior. What we do know, however, is that the shrewish behavior of
Editha is depicted as unattractive just as Editha herself is found less than physically
attractive. It is her wealth alone that has captured the financially challenged narrator who
stands to lose considerable social and financial advantages if he displeases her. Yet
Editha‘s attractiveness as a future wife cannot ultimately compete with a more beautiful
and submissive feminine type. Wealth is all well and good, but there are some things, the
text tells us, that may in the final analysis be more important. What that is we can see in
the character of the temporarily risen mummy, Princess Hatasou.
103
Princess Hatasou, Editha‘s competition, is the traditional woman who lifts the
narrator up out of his powerless position and restores his masculine pride. As the
daughter of a great pharaoh, though one only resurrected every thousand or so years, she
has great wealth. Unlike Editha, though, she has two other characteristics that the
narrator greatly desires: beauty and submissiveness. Though he only knows Hatasou for
a period of hours, he falls in love with her sufficiently to be prepared to be mummified,
while living, so that he can live with her for
eternity.33 Her manner is the equivalent of the
submissive, attractive woman often portrayed in
the New Woman cartoons of the nineties, where
the New Woman, commonly viewed as
unattractive and abrasive, is contrasted with the
more attractive traditional woman. Figure 2, a
cartoon appearing in the 23 June 1894 issue of
Figure 2
Punch under the title of ―The New School,‖
nicely illustrates the two types. The older woman (Miss Quilpson), standing with hands
behind her back, eyes looking down upon the younger, seated woman (Mrs. Blyth),
represents the New Woman ideal of the type of woman who rejects the idea of marriage.
The caption tells the story:
33
The narrator‘s choice to live for eternity is part of what Bradley Deane identifies as mummy fiction‘s
―fascinat[ion] [with] . . . reincarnation‘s immunity to historical change. Like the unfinished narratives of
marriage, reincarnation disrupts the advance of time, and is thus particularly suited to the anomalous ideals
of the occupation [of Egypt]‖ (402).
104
Mrs. Blyth (newly married): ‗I wonder you never married, Miss
Quilpson!‘
Miss Quilpson (author of ‗Caliban Dethroned &c, &c.) ‗What? I marry! I
be a man‘s plaything! No, thank you!‘‖ (qtd. in Richardson and Willis 16)
The intended humor of the cartoon, of course, is the idea that Miss Quilpson
could ever be any man‘s plaything. At another level, however, there is the very real
cultural anxiety regarding the independence and accomplishment of women such as Miss
Quilpson. Women, or so ran the thinking of the traditionalists of the time, were meant
for marriage, as Mrs. Crackanthorpe argued in ―The Revolt of the Daughters ,‖ or, failing
that, serving as Patricia Jalland observes, as caretakers for the elderly fathers or in some
other subservient fashion (Crackanthorpe 25; Jalland 134). A woman like Miss Quilpson
ran contrary to the mold. Such women were routinely depicted in newspaper and
magazine cartoons as unattractive, sexually barren creatures. Too much education, it was
thought would lead to lack of fertility and hence detract from what was deemed women‘s
primary reason for existence (Rubinstein 200).
Women of this sort might be depicted as skinny,
mousy types, quill in hand, busy with her books
and papers (see Figure 3) or as physically
dominant types such as Mrs. Strongmind or Miss
Quilpson. The womanly woman would exhibit no
such tendencies. She would devote herself to what
feminist Constance Lytton, described as ―the
Figure 3
105
interests of maidenhood, of wifeliness, of maternity‖ (6). Miss Quilpson‘s dedication to
career leaves no room for such matters. Mrs. Blyth—undoubtedly happy in her condition
as her name, closely paralleling the English adjective ―blithe‖—, on the other hand, is
young, attractive, and apparently capable of child-bearing. For the man who wishes
according to the biological drive to spread his seed, she is obviously the more desirable.
The plain Jane Editha, unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately, considering the man she
ultimately avoids marrying) is not so attractive, and it is for this reason that the narrator
goes in search of more attractive women. Finding Princess Hatasou, a mummy, arisen
from her thousand-year sleep along with the court of her father, Thothmes answers all the
desires of his heart. In Princess Hatasou, the narrator finds a highly placed woman,
wealthy within the realm in which she lives, a realm where she and her fellow mummies
rise each thousand years, enjoying the wealth of their past lives and feasting every day in
which they awaken. With Princess Hatasou, the narrator will have not only his desire for
wealth answered, but his desire for sexual compatibility as well as a life that never ends.
In his relationship with Hatasou, the narrator is able to engage in the commonly held
sexual fantasy of the Orient, where women of the Near East were pictured as suppliers of
unending sexual satisfaction (Said 188, 190). Hatasou, moreover, will supply the
narrator‘s desire for a woman subservient to his desires and one who will serve his best
interests, as we see when she speaks up for him when he is belittled by her father. Unlike
Editha, Hatasou will supply his every wish for the beautiful, submissive wife that the
narrator obviously desires.
106
A large part of Hatasou‘s appeal to the narrator can be seen in the way she
interacts with the men in her life. With her father, Hatasou is the submissive daughter, a
submission required in this case not only by reason of filial duty but as a result of his
supreme authority as pharaoh. We can see an example of this skillful interaction when
Hatasou responds to a criticism leveled at the narrator by her father:
―Dear father,‖ she said with a respectful inclination, ―surely the stranger,
barbarian though he be, cannot relish such pointed allusions to his person
and costume. We must let him feel the grace and delicacy of Egyptian
refinement. Then he may perhaps carry back with him some faint echo of
its cultured beauty to his northern wilds.‖ (n.p.)
Though this speech does not immediately have the effect Hatasou wishes (his
reply to her, ―Nonsense. . . . Savages have no feelings‖ [n.p.]), it does reveal her skilful
use of culturally acceptable means of female communication. She speaks to him, to
begin with, both by recalling their relationship and by establishing her love for him in her
reference to him as ―Dear father.‖ She does so, furthermore, ―with a respectful
inclination,‖ and then continues to persuade him through additional reasoning and
flattery. She couples her claim that the ―stranger‖ must surely not appreciate being made
the object of comments about ―his person and costume,‖ the very things that Thothmes
and court had been discussing, with her agreement to his assessment of the stranger‘s
barbarity. She, thus establishes points of agreement with her father and their relationship
briefly and effectively. She furthers her cause by flattering her father as the absolute
ruler of a superior nation, one that has ―‗the grace and delicacy of Egyptian refinement‘‖
107
(n.p.). Her conclusion is that her father‘s kingdom will spread its influence as the
stranger carries what he has learned of her father‘s kingdom and ―its cultured beauty‖
back ―to his northern wilds‘‖ (n.p.). She is, in fact, a magnificent rhetorician, well
acquainted with ―rule-governed character of social interaction‖ (Grimshaw 99).
Her submissiveness stands in stark contrast to the manner in which her father
speaks to her and to others, marking the significant difference between male and female
power. For her father, there is no need to be careful in speech. When Hatasou speaks to
him of the stranger as she has, he dismisses her contentions ―testily‖ (n.p.). As far as her
father is concerned, the narrator, because he is uncivilized, is incapable of feeling
anything. As a savage, he is cast in a position as an object and is talked about as if he
were an ignorant beast, casting him in the feminized role that traditional women so often
occupied. Thothmes does not at first directly address the narrator, in part because to do
so would be beneath him as pharaoh and in part because he does not recognize the
narrator as fully human. When Thothmes first sees the narrator, he sees only a curiosity,
a man of unknown origin and strange clothing. His speech is therefore forthright,
completely ignoring the stranger, speaking of him as though he were an animal incapable
of understanding, noting, with detachment, how the narrator, whom he calls ― ‗a very
curious person,‘‖ ― ‗does not at all resemble that of an Ethiopian or other savage, nor . . .
the ― ‗pale-faced sailors who come to us from the Achaian land beyond the seas,‘‖ finally
concluding that, though the narrator‘s ― ‗features. . . are not very different from [the
Achaians],‘‖ that ― ‗his extraordinary and singularly artistic dress shows him to belong to
some other barbaric race‘‖ (n.p.)
108
This speech, unlike Hatasou‘s, clearly indicates his power both as pharaoh and as
a man in a paternalistic society. There is nothing conciliatory here; he says what he
thinks without apology, as a man in authority may do. The ―social situation,‖ which,
according to sociolinguistic pioneer William Labov, ―is the most powerful determinant of
verbal behavior,‖ does not demand it. Unlike Hatasou, he does not need to conciliate any
one. A woman may need to couch her words in expressions of deference, but not a man.
In this way, the story, whether consciously or not, restores the traditional balance of
power between men and women through their speech. The man is dominant; the woman,
submissive. Hatasou, in following this socially acceptable verbal behavior, demonstrates
that she knows her place, unlike the abrasive Editha, who nags her husband-to-be.
The narrator‘s stronger position as a paternalistic male is also evident in his
speech when he is in Hatasou‘s world in the pyramid. No longer Editha‘s cowed suitor,
he speaks with a renewed sense of his dignity, defending his honor against Thothmes‘s
charges of savagery, claiming his right to ―‗respectful treatment‘‖ as a ―free born
Englishman‖ and ―‗citizen of the First Naval Power in the World‘‖ (n.p.). The narrator‘s
tone here of confidence and authority with its demand for respect marks its language as
masculine as it shows none of the typical deferential markers often noted in linguistic
analysis of feminine speech in contrast to Hatasou‘s more conciliatory language. Part of
this difference goes beyond gender relations—all of Thothmes‘s subjects speak to him
with the greatest deference—but part of it is clearly related to western conceptions of
gender that expect manly men, a concern that was often treated in the pages of the
London Times, to be confident and assertive. This speech and the self-respect it
109
expresses is in marked contrast with the worm that the narrator has become under Editha
Fitz-Simkins‘s thumb. This speech also marks the beginning of that point where
Thothmes begins to gain greater respect for the narrator—especially once the narrator
claims to be the ―‗younger brother of our reigning king,‘‖ a falsehood that the narrator
tells to comfort himself since he ―was only claiming consanguinity with an imaginary
personage‖ (n.p.). Moreover, the changing nature of this speech indicates the man he is
to be with Hatasou, a man confident in his masculine role.
Despite the story‘s obvious preference for the submissive woman, however, it
does not argue that submission be taken to the point of never expressing an opinion,
though it does express a preference for a woman of gentleness and beauty. In fact, there
are times, once Hatasou becomes better acquainted with the narrator, that she can be
almost as blunt as her father, but with this difference: she speaks to the man she loves
not only with truth but affection. Telling him, for instance, how ―‗shockingly ignorant‘‖
he is with matters of mummification, she sounds just like her father. With matters related
to courtship, however, we can see once again the gentle woman, as she and the narrator
―[stroll] . . . down the least illuminated of the colonnades‖ and sit ―beside a marble
fountain‖ where they talk about ―fish, and gods, and Egyptian habits, and Egyptian
philosophy, and, above all, Egyptian love-making‖ (n.p.). These words of love, coupled
with Hatasou‘s exotic beauty and tenderness, completely win over the narrator. Editha,
whom the narrator describes as ―[t]he mere ugly daughter of a rich and vulgar brand-new
knight,‖ cannot compete with the ―a Princess of the Blood Royal‖ (n.p.). All Editha has
to offer is money—despite her father‘s essentially purchased knighthood, they are vulgar
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nouveau-riche—while Hatasou can provide the narrator not only with wealth, but
tenderness, beauty, eternal life and access to a genuine royal pedigree. Given this choice,
the narrator not surprisingly chooses the princess.
The mummy narrative‘s preference for traditional gender roles is perhaps most
dramatically presented in those tales in which women with lethal power willingly
surrender their power to those men they love. In stories of this type, women, who are
submissive to the men they love, become monsters to those they oppose. The stories
follow what Christopher Craft calls the ―triple rhythm‖ of the Gothic text, which ―first
invites or admits a monster, then entertains and is entertained by monstrosity for some
extended duration, until in its closing pages it expels or repudiates the monster and all the
disruption that he/she/it brings‖ (107). Two stories are of this type: George Griffith‘s
The Mummy and Miss Nitocris and Bram Stoker‘s The Jewel of Seven Stars, both of
which raise the fear of powerful women to a terrifying degree before safely recontaining
them within the bounds of traditional matrimonial roles. In Griffith‘s tale, the monstrous
role is played not only by the villains in the narrative, but by the heroine, Niti Marmion, a
young woman, who thanks to the incredible power she has gained in the fourth dimension
is able to travel freely through time and space and to kill through the power of her will
alone. While she is undoubtedly on the side of good, she nevertheless manages to play
the role of fiend with Prince Oscar Oscarovitch, whom she tortures until she finally
grants him the grace of death. With Lieutenant-Commander Mark Merrill, a brave and
honorable man whom she loves, she is a different woman altogether, giving up that
power in her relationship with Merrill to be the sweet, innocent wife. For a good portion
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of the book, however, she is the powerful woman, her monstrosity revealed in her total
control of Oscarovitch as she manipulates him, tortures him, and ultimately destroys him.
She thus enters as monster, demonstrates that monstrosity with Oscarovitch, and then, by
the tale‘s end, is disposed of as monster and reinstated in her position as submissive
woman. Stoker‘s tale of Jewel is a bit more complex. In the 1903 first edition of the tale,
the monster is, in fact, the mummy of Queen Tera, whom Abel Trelawny and those
assisting him have gathered together to resurrect. The ―triple rhythm‖ applies here as the
―monster,‖ Tera, is introduced, her monstrosity entertained throughout the book in her
mysterious acts of violence, and ultimately resolved after she destroys all but one of those
attending her. The 1912 edition, however, takes a different approach. Though the same
pattern of monster introduction and entertainment of that monster applies here, the
conclusion which brings the monster under control is accomplished in a much less
dramatic fashion as the concluding violence of the first edition is omitted and the monster
is tamed through marriage as she merges with Margaret Trelawny who marries the
book‘s narrator, Malcolm Ross. Both Niti/Nitocris and Tera are dangerous, but they give
up that power, following the Gothic ―triple rhythm,‖ to surrender themselves to the men
they love, for reasons that can only be understood as an acceptance of the culture‘s
gendered power structures. In so doing, both novels—Nitocris and the 1912 edition of
Jewel—ultimately prove themselves conservators of traditional values.
The relationships of the Queen Nitocris/Niti dyad are interesting in the contrasts
they form with regard to those men they loved and those they hated, for though they
treated the men they loved with tenderness and affection, with their enemies they posed
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incredible danger, demonstrating a power that parallels the threat traditionalists feared
might come to pass in their own time with the agitation of modern women. We can see
this danger at work in Niti/Nitocris‘s relationships with the villain of the tale, known as
Menkau-Ra in ancient Egypt but as Prince Oscar Oscarovitch in the present. In both
incarnations, Menkau-Ra/Oscarovitch is driven by his greed, ambition, and lust. As
Menkau-Ra, he murders Queen Nitocris‘s husband, whom she loves dearly, so that he
may marry her and become pharaoh of Egypt, and in his reincarnated form as Prince
Oscar Oscarovitch, he shows himself willing to commit any number of crimes—murder,
kidnapping, and the like—to achieve his goals, even going so far with Niti as to be
willing to resort to rape if that is the only way he may have her. In response to such
villainy, Niti and Nitocris, who both show appropriate deference to the men they love, are
decisive, violent, and cruel in meting out justice to those they oppose. Queen Nitocris
drowns her murderous suitor by opening the gates of the Nile to flood the room in which
a wedding banquet is being held, while Niti and the queen jointly punish Menkau-Ra‘s
reincarnated form by luring him with Niti‘s sexual desirability and then putting him to
bed with the mummy of the queen, driving him mad and torturing him until at the book‘s
end they finally ―allow‖ him to die (n.p.).
This latter death smacks of what historically has been called ―Oriental cruelty,‖34
such as that accredited to the Beetle., the monstrous entity of Richard Marsh‘s 1897 novel
34
A Professor Seeley, writing in the October 1869 issue of Macmillan‘s Magazine describes the concept of
―Oriental cruelty‖ in an essay entitled ―Roman Imperialism.‖ According to Seeley, the Roman Empire,
upon the ascension of Diocletian and Constantine to the throne, moved from a Greek and Roman theory of
government to an ―Asiatic view,‖ which, made cruelty a ―part of the system‖ of government, replete with
―[e]xecutions, tortures, and massacres.‖ Illustrating this cruelty, Seeley notes, that ―Constantine puts to
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of the same name. Kelly Hurley‘s description of the Beetle in her study of The Gothic
Body portrays the stereotype of another sort of feminine other of the Orient, the
dangerous woman capable of destroying a man:
Like most ―unscrupulous Orientals,‖ the Beetle is savage in her pleasures,
and heartless in their execution. She is cruel, and takes a wanton delight
in her cruelty. She toys with her victims long after their spirit has been
crushed, seeming to delight in simply eliciting their screams of terror and
pain. She is secretive, unsociable, untrustworthy, filthy, foul-smelling.
She has an Oriental envy of the superior white . . . , which translates into a
boundless hatred of that unattainable whiteness, a desire to punish and
mutilate white skin. And she harbors a ―typically‖ Eastern (and also,
perhaps, feminine) vengefulness, nursing an inveterate grudge against Paul
Lessingham, the man who spurned her, travelling to England more than
twenty years later to destroy him. ―Plainly, with this gentleman35 [sic],‖
remarks Atherton, ―hate meant hate—in the solid Oriental sense. . . .‖
(131-32)
This description of the Beetle and the Queen Nitocris/Niti pairing is as remarkable for its
similarities as for its differences, both being equally instructive. Two parts of this
description are particularly important—those dealing with the described cruelty and those
death his wife and son‖ and ―Valentinian . . . sheds as much blood as Caracalla, apparently from no bad
motive, but only from a kind of mania for severity which has infected government‖ (476). We can see the
same sort of severity in both The Mummy and Miss Nitocris and The Jewel of Seven Stars.
35
The Beetle‘s gender, as this quote indicates, is hard to pin down, though it is ultimately discovered to be
female.
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dealing with the physical descriptions of the tormentors. The description of the Beetle‘s
cruelty closely parallels that of Niti and the queen. The queen closely resembles the
description of the Beetle‘s ―inveterate grudge‖ against the man who had ―spurned‖ her
years ago so that she comes to enact her vengeance ―more than twenty years later‖ (132).
The queen‘s hatred of Menkau-Ra has lasted for centuries, and she seeks to destroy his
reincarnated form as Prince Oscarovitch and enlists Niti‘s help in the process. The
delight in torture is also theirs. In speaking to her father of her plans for the prince who
hopes to persuade her to marry him, she draws on her beliefs in eastern religion and the
terrors of Christian theology to describe what she will do to the prince. On ascertaining
that her father does not, as she does not, ―‗believe in the forgiveness of sins,‘‖ she tells
him that she intends to make Oscarovitch pay to the full for the sins he has committed
against her both in ancient Egypt as Queen Nitocris and in modern Britain as Niti. She
will allow him to ―‗take‘‖ her (in marriage), but once he has ―‗got‘‖ her, ―‗he shall taste
what the hot-and-strong sort of Christian preachers call the torments of the damned‘‖:
No, I shall not kill him. He shall live till he prays to all his gods, if he has
any, that he may die. He shall hunger without eating, thirst without
drinking, lie down without sleeping, have wealth that he cannot spend, and
palaces so hideously haunted that he dare not live in them, until, when
men wish to illustrate the uttermost extreme of human misery, they shall
point to Prince Oscarovitch. I, the Queen, have said it!‖ (249-50)
It is hard to imagine much greater torment than what Niti has in mind for her
victim, though, according to her own reckoning, her actions are nothing more than
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justice. Much of the rancor of the description seems to come from the queen, which is
evident from the conclusion of the description of the kinds of torture to which
Oscarovitch shall be subjected where Niti suddenly speaks in the voice of the queen,
announcing, ―‗I, the Queen, have said it!‘‖ and, of course, as the queen, she may work in
the role of legal judge of offending parties. But there seems to be a sadistic delight in the
imagined punishments—the prince is going to suffer and she is going to enjoy watching
him suffer. Nothing will give her (and here, we are moving into the world of the queen)
greater pleasure than to see the man who was responsible for the murder of her husband
so many thousands of years ago suffer for his sins. She has held on to that anger with a
bitter hatred that survives the millennia. Though she can be the submissive wife with the
man she loves, as she apparently was to her husband in ancient Egypt and would be again
with Mark Merrill, the man she loves in her current incarnation, with her enemies she is
fierce.
Yet there is a matter of significant difference that needs to be taken into account
in the descriptions of Niti and the queen and the Beetle, for the Beetle is utterly
disgusting, capable of seducing her victims only through hypnotic power, whereas Niti
and the queen are beautiful. We have to ask ourselves what we are to make of such a
significant difference? Part of the difference can undoubtedly be accounted for by the
roles that each of these characters play. The Beetle is pure monstrosity standing outside
society, a ―filthy, foul-smelling‖ creature jealous of the ―unattainable whiteness‖ that she
can never have (Hurley131-32). Nitocris and Niti are not like this. They have no need to
desire an ―unattainable whiteness‖ for they already have it as ―golden-haired‖ women
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(n.p.), and as possessors of white skin they have a significant cultural superiority in a
time when the racial type of the ancient Egyptians was much disputed.36 White skin,
furthermore, unified Niti and Nitocris with the white majority of the reading public,
though ―race‖ at this time often had more to do with nationality than it did with skin color
and facial characteristics (Anderson 18). Moreover, Niti‘s position as a British subject
and one whose appearance is almost identical to the ancient queen (Niti is ―‗[j]ust a little
taller‘‖ and her hair may be just a shade darker [n.p.]) marks the duo as figuratively ―one
of us.‖
It is therefore all the more shocking when someone whom readers can easily read
as one of their own kind turns out to be something altogether different: the Other
becomes ourselves. As Pogo said so many years ago, ―We have met the enemy and he is
us.‖ This is in some ways more terrifying than the Beetle, for the monster turns out not
to be the freakish-looking creature we expect of our monsters, but a beautiful, desirable
woman. Many of us have learned from childhood to associate goodness with beauty:
witches are old, ugly hags, while the victims of these fairy tales are ordinarily beautiful
young women. Ugliness is only for those who are either wicked characters or for those
who have been cursed by some wicked supernatural power.
The beautiful woman, of course, can be more dangerous, for her beauty is an
attraction to would-be victims, drawing them in as the Venus Flytrap draws in insects
with its deliciously sweet sap. Niti Marmion is such a trap for Oscarovitch. Though his
attentions are initially uninvited (she shivers with ―revulsion‖ when she first meets him
36
See ―Invasion Fears and the Mummy Narrative‖ (Chapter 2) for a fuller discussion of this issue.
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[n.p.]), she nevertheless determines to use her attractiveness to let him think he has
captured her affections, which she will then use to trap him and, with the help of Queen
Nitocris and the powers she has acquired while in the fourth dimension, slowly destroy
him through the force of her will.
Perhaps just as horrifying is the idea that the woman who possesses such power
can be the very same woman who seems to be the dutiful and subservient woman that
men have as their daughters and wives. The story seems to suggest as much. Certainly,
Oscarovitch did not imagine that Niti was anything other than a woman who could be
conquered and could be made to serve his whims. On his first meeting with her, he tells
Phadrig, his assistant, exactly what his plans regarding her are.
―I have seen many a fair woman, and thought myself in love with some of
them, but by the beard of Ivan, I have never seen one like this. I tell you,
Phadrig, that the moment my eyes looked for the first time into hers, only
a few minutes ago, I knew that I had found my fate, and, having found it, I
shall take very good care that I don‘t lose it. And you shall help me to
keep it: I shall try every fair means first to make her my princess, for,
whether she was once Queen of Egypt or not, she is worthy now to sit
beside a sovereign on his throne—and it might be that I could some day
give her such a place—but have her I will, if not as fairly-won wife and
consort, then as stolen slave and plaything, to keep as long as my fancy
lasts.‖ (n.p.)
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The prince‘s judgment of Niti is of mixed value. Certainly, he recognizes her superiority
as a woman, but he has no idea of her power. He knows her for her beauty and the way
she carries herself—she would be one who could sit upon a throne, but the idea that such
a woman might be able to overpower and ruin him completely escapes him. He has no
idea of her spiritual power.
This power, however, may well be a force too prone to chaos and is thus tempered
and ultimately tamed through the patriarchal structures of the early twentieth century.
With her father, Niti is the obedient daughter. Before she ascends to the fourth
dimension and gains the power with which she ultimately destroys Oscarovitch, she is,
with the exception of the greater education that her father has given her, very much the
dutiful, obedient daughter. This obedience can readily be seen when she has to break off
her engagement to Lieutenant-Commander Mark Merrill. Merrill had asked Niti for her
hand in marriage and she had willingly given her consent, but the question of her father‘s
permission was necessary before they could wed. Her father, however, does not give his
consent and she must break the news to Merrill. Niti‘s words and mannerisms betray her
conflicted emotions when she delivers this news and does so in such a way as to present a
picture of a traditional femininity:
―I‘m awfully sorry, Mark,‖ she began, in a tone which literally sent
a shiver—a real physical shiver—through him, for he was very, very much
in love with her.
―What on earth is the matter, Niti?‖ he said, looking at the fair face
and downcast eyes which, for the first time since he had asked the eternal
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question and she had answered it according to his heart‘s desire, had
refused to meet his. ―Let‘s have it out at once. It‘s lot better to be shot
through the heart than starved to death, you know. . . .
―Oh, it‘s –it‘s—it‘s a beastly shame, that‘s what it is, so there!‖
And as she said this Miss Nitocris Marmion, B.Sc., stamped her foot on
the turf and felt inclined to burst out crying, just as a milkmaid might have
done.
―Which means,‖ said Mark, . . . ―that the Professor has said ‗No.‘
Her explanation for her obedience indicates her unwillingness to do anything
contrary to her father‘s will since, as she says, ―‗I owe all that I ever had to him. He has
been father, mother, teacher, friend companion—everything to me‘‖ (n.p.). Adding that
she and her father ―‗are absolutely alone in the world,‘‖ she tells Merrill, that though
Merrill would be the only one who she would ever considering leaving her father for, she
cannot do so without her father‘s permission, for, as she says, ―‗I won‘t disobey him and
break his heart, as I believe I should, even for you‘‖ (n.p.).
Niti, as this passage makes clear, is a woman perfectly at home with the idea of
submission to the men in her life. The context of the declaration of her commitment to
her father and the reluctance with which she expresses that she must abandon her plans to
marry Merrill make clear that Niti is a woman who would be willing to submit herself to
her husband—even after her ascension to the fourth dimension, for she continues to
respect her father even though her powers have increased dramatically. Of course, so
have her father‘s. The balance of power between father and daughter would have been
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dangerously unequal had Griffith not provided such equality. The only battle between
those who had ascended to the fourth dimension in the novel is that between her father,
Professor Franklin Marmion, and Phadrig Amena, a battle which Phadrig recognizes as
unequal as he realizes the professor‘s vast superiority. Nevertheless, it is not the
professor‘s power that keeps Niti in line, but her already expressed commitment to her
father whom she loves. The same love and commitment would undoubtedly apply in her
marriage with Merrill. The marriage that finally takes place in the one paragraph
epilogue of the novel serves as a point of stability on which the disturbing action of the
book can finally rest.
The double wedding which took place at St George‘s, Hanover Square, the
following June was one of the most brilliant functions of the year. Their
Majesties of Russia and Great Britain graced the ceremony with their
presence, and, as a special act of grace to the man who, with Franklin
Marmion‘s help, had saved the world from what might have been one of
the bloodiest wars in history, H.M.S. Nitocris was put into commission for
a cruise, the object of which was anything rather than warlike. Two of the
happiest couples on land or sea made the round of the world in her.
Before they returned Princess Hermia had taken the last of Phadrig‘s drug
and lain down to sleep never to wake again, and in the fullness of her
happiness Nitocris pardoned Oscar Oscarovitch, and allowed him to die.
The lack of detail about the marriage means that readers must project the relationship
they have already witnesses between Niti and Merrill as continuing on the same footing
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as before. Despite the fact that Niti has put Oscarovitch in a living hell, we are given no
reason to expect the same will take place with Merrill. The difference is that she loves
Merrill and thus submits herself to him as a worthy man. This is the way things have
always been, the book seems to imply, and this is the way things will go on. Niti‘s
advantages as a woman with education and her friend Brenda‘s New Womanish advances
that we see in the book as the latter motors about town in her automobile, moving about
town freely without need for masculine escort as had previously been the pattern, means
that the book does not entirely discount feminine rights, but it does seem to still see
traditional roles as the best bet for social stability as well as a good means of bringing the
chaos of the book‘s action to a close as representative of that stability. Change is all well
and good, the novel seems to suggest, but, as Blanche Alethea Crackanthorpe, a feminist
writer of ―The Revolt of the Daughters‖ suggested in1894, marriage was still ―the best
profession for a woman‖ (qtd. in Rubinstein 13).
Stoker‘s story of The Jewel of Seven Stars is a special case in terms of the
powerful woman, for in this tale we see the fruitlessness of the female attempt to assert
power in a paternalistic society. In Stoker‘s tale there are the usual elements of mummy
fiction: ―a surpassingly beautiful reanimated mummy, an uncanny reincarnation, a
marriage plot, an unsettling of the distinctions between ancient power and those of
modernity‖ (Deane 404). But there is also in this tale one of the clearest attempts at the
assertion of female political control of all the stories. In this tale we see how an educated
woman, with political, sexual, and magical power, uses all her wiles to dominate those
around her only to fail finally despite her otherwise overwhelming advantages.
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The story of Tera‘s position in ancient Egypt helps tell the story. According to
the background that Stoker gives her, Tera, before her death and mummification, was the
most powerful woman in Egypt. Educated by her father in ―statecraft‖ and the arts of the
priests, including ―‗black magic,‘‖ and strong in the army‘s allegiance that her father had
secured for her before his death, Tera had every advantage. Determined to prove herself
every bit as capable of ruling as a man, she even went so far on occasion, like Hatshepsut,
the female pharaoh on whom, according to Lisa Hopkins, she was based, as to dress in
the traditional garments of the male pharaohs (137). This fact that is made clear in the
drawings on the wall of her tomb, where she is depicted first ―in man‘s dress‖ and later in
female clothing, with male ―‗raiment‘‖ lying at her feet, signifying not only her equality
with men, but her victory over them ( Jewel 112). 37
The powers of greatest consequence for Tera and those with whom she interacts
after her death, however, are those involving her powers of sexuality and her power over
death. The power over death, of course, is what makes it possible for her to move and act
in the lives of those still living, as, for example, when she strikes down those who attempt
to rob her tomb and when she attempts numerous times to wrest the key to the safe
containing important materials having to do with her resurrection from Abel Trelawny. It
is also what nearly makes possible her bodily resurrection. Her sexual power, on the
other hand, is expressed primarily in the scene where Trelawny and team gather round
37
Hatshepsut, the spelling of whose name includes not only that already given but Hatshohpsitu and
Hatshepsou, was the subject of two books around the turn of the twentieth century: Edouard Naville‘s
Trois inscriptions de la Reine Hatshepsou (1895) and Edouard Naville and Howard Carter‘s The Tomb of
Hatshohpsitu (1906).
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her body to unwrap it. This scene, reminiscent of the private unwrapping parties of
mummies held in the early days of the nineteenth century, betrays their (the unwrappings)
―erotic character‖ (Pearce 59).
The scene, despite its supposedly scientific character, is really more of a striptease
than anything else, that holds those men unwrapping her in rapt attention. There is no
hurry here as the procedure is described. Each detail of the unwrapping is painstakingly
given: the quality cloth she is wrapped in and of the spices used; the sound of the tearing
bandages as bit by bit her body is revealed; the symbols and pictures used in the inner
wrappings and their colors—until finally the body begins to make itself known more
clearly as it is freed from the bundle of bandages surrounding her body. Then, like a set
of Chinese boxes, once these are all removed, there is yet another layer—a wedding
dress, which is, like the rest of the descriptions, given in loving detail. ―Round the neck,‖
we are told, this dress
was delicately embroidered in pure gold with tiny sprays of sycamore; and
round the feet, similarly worked, was an endless line of lotus plants of
unequal height, and with all the graceful abandon of natural growth;
Across the body, but manifestly not surrounding it, was a girdle of
jewels. A wondrous girdle, which shone and glowed with all the forms and
phases and colours of the sky!
The buckle was a great yellow stone, round of outline, deep and
curved, as if a yielding globe had been pressed down. It shone and glowed
as though a veritable sun lay within; the rays of its light seemed to strike
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out and illumine all round. Flanking it were two great moonstones of
lesser size, whose glowing, beside the glory of the sun-stone, was like the
silvery sheen of moonlight.
And on either side, linked by golden clasps of exquisite shape, was
a line of flaming jewels, of which the colours seemed to glow. Each of
these stones seemed to hold a living star, which twinkled in every phase of
changing light.
The poetic language with its depiction of each detail and its reference to various
jewels not only enriches the image that Stoker presents us with, but it also serves to
heighten the eroticism of the scene. We are seduced by the eye, by the beautiful
workmanship on the cloth, by the glow of the jewels. Each stitch of the gown that is
described and each jewel with which it is adorned adds to the beauty of the scene while at
the same time it retards the eventual disrobing, thus increasing the sexual tension. We
are teased as the men slowly disrobe the queen who lies within.
The queen herself, of course, is the goal of all this waiting, and her appearance
does not disappoint. Rather than a dried up corpse, Tera appears to them as an ―unclad
beauty,‖ a ―white wonder‖ and ―beautiful form‖ that were ―something to dream of,‖ ―not
like death at all,‖ but ―like a statue carven in ivory by the hand of a Praxiteles‖ (203).
―There was none of that horrible shrinkage which death seems to effect in a moment,‖ he
continues, but rather a beautiful form, with ―full and round‖ flesh ―as in a living person‖
with ―skin as smooth as satin‖ and ―extraordinary‖ color, the only false note in the whole
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of the description being the ―shattered, bloodstained wrist and missing hand,‖ which adds
a touch of horror to the whole (204).
The horror is not surprising, for as Stephen D. Arata notes, ―the fear of women is
never far from the surface of [Stoker‘s] novels‖ (625). Hopkins argues that the fear in
Jewel is the ―horror of motherhood,‖ Andrew Smith the ―horror of women‘s
empowerment‖ (39). The fear, whatever its cause, undoubtedly, critics have argued,
came from Stoker‘s difficult relationships with his mother and his wife and from his
concern about the emergence of the New Woman (Hopkins 146). This latter concern,
especially, makes a great deal of sense, for in his tale of Jewel, Stoker, in bringing down
Tera either through killing her off or through domesticating her through marriage,
imaginatively solves the problem of the woman‘s movement for traditionalist men and
women. The first technique—killing Tera‘s character—Stoker uses in the 1903 edition;
in the second edition, which may not have been written by Stoker , the woman ―problem‖
is solved through marriage. The more violent solution in the1903 edition is surprisingly
the one written before the first act of militancy on the part of feminist Christabel
Pankhurst when she, along with Annie Kenney had disrupted an address of Sir Edward
Grey in Manchester on October 15, 1905 when they ―persisted in putting the question as
to what the Liberal party would do with regard to the emancipation of women, if it should
be returned to power‖ (Metcalfe 23). The two were ―unceremoniously hustled from the
hall‖ and Pankhurst was charged with ―‗assaulting‘ the police‖ (Metcalfe 23). For the
militants, the struggle was a matter of life and death (qtd. in Metcalfe 23 ). Other
violence followed.
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[Militant feminists] burned down churches as the Church of England was
against what they wanted; they vandalised Oxford Street, apparently
breaking all the windows in this famous street; they chained themselves to
Buckingham Palace as the Royal Family were seen to be against women
having the right to vote; they hired out boats, sailed up the Thames and
shouted abuse through loud hailers at Parliament as it sat; others refused to
pay their tax. Politicians were attacked as they went to work. Their
homes were fire bombed. Golf courses were vandalised. The first decade
of Britain in the C20th was proving to be violent in the extreme. (Trueman
n.p.) .
Things got so bad that, according to Marjorie Caygill, the trustees of the British Museum
began to refuse to allow women to enter without a male escort who ―would stand surety
for their good behavior.‖ Nevertheless, their precautions—which included not only the
promises of the male escort and ―additional plain clothes police . . . . stationed in the
galleries‖- - ultimately proved insufficient as ―one lady broke a number of panes of glass
in the Asiatic Saloon with a chopper and a further onslaught was made with a hatchet on
a case in the first Egyptian Room, the latter culprit having been trailed to the spot by the
plain clothes police‖ (48).
Tera‘s commission of mass murder in the first (1903) edition more closely
parallels the feared violence suggested by these acts, yet it is not until the second edition
in 1912 after such things have actually come to pass, that the author of the revision chose
to temper the mayhem. Perhaps the reality was too much to be repeated in a piece of
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fiction that publishers hoped to sell. Taking Margaret and domesticating her through
marriage, especially as she is the one who is the most closely linked with Tera, is in
essence domesticating Tera herself, making her manageable. There seem to be
essentially two choices of how to deal with the dangerous woman as it is presented in
Jewel: both involve killing the responsible party (Tera), but the latter more completely
restores traditional gender roles through the marriage of the one most closely allied with
Tera, her double, Margaret. In both cases it is also important to note that the danger
posed by such a woman is contained; in the first edition, though Tera kills everyone
except for the narrator, the violence is at least contained within the fantastic space that the
Trelawny home has become; in the second, the violence is not only contained within the
home, it is rendered less dangerous by the recovery of everyone except for Tera, but is
even further removed from the realm of possibility by Margaret‘s submission to
marriage.
The danger posed by Tera may well be a reflection of fin de siècle Great Britain.
Though there was once again a man on the throne of England, the feminist movement
was going strong.
Suffragists and their opponents were writing letters to the editor, articles, and cartoons
that commented on the issue of women‘s rights. A real fear of men losing control—
treated humorously for the most part in newspapers and magazines—seemed to be
popping up everywhere, a fact which was undoubtedly a result of anxieties among
traditionalists provoked by the advances women had been making in the past few years.
It had not been that long ago, after all, since men had had the right to beat their wives
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―within reason‖ (Michie 415), to assume legal ownership of their wife‘s property upon
marriage (Rubinstein 52), and to have full legal control of the children issuing from the
marriage, unlike the wife‘s rights which were either non-existent or severely restrained
(Rubinstein 53). Things were changing now, however, and women were gaining more
power than before and this undoubtedly dismayed many traditionalists. Fears about the
degeneration of British manhood following hard upon the debacle of the Boer War
combined with a more assertive woman coming out of the women‘s movement resulted
in images of powerful women threatening to rule over men. Given the circumstances, it
is hardly surprising that such issues would be treated in newspaper and magazine reports
and cartoons.
One example of that treatment can be seen in a cartoon called ―A New Woman—
She Plays Football with the Baby‖ (see Figure 4). In this cartoon, published in The
Illustrated Police News in the February 22, 1896 issue, we can see a woman who has lost
all of the traditional feminine virtues of submissiveness and maternal instincts. The
picture shows a woman run amok, gender roles inverted as she storms into her home,
armed with an umbrella, pulling her husband‘s nose, he lying on the floor in his night
shirt, trying ineffectually to restrain his wife, while their baby lies helplessly on the floor
underfoot as its mother appears to be just an instant away from kicking the child with her
foot. The overturned chair adds to the sense of chaos, suggesting that the wife has
entered the home like some kind of whirlwind, wreaking havoc as she goes. Though the
woman is still considerably constrained by a corset to achieve an unnatural waspish
waist, for the most part it is the man who is put in an inferior position as he is dressed for
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bed, paralleling the baby who is dressed similarly. The New Woman in this picture is
dressed for the street, giving her greater freedom of movement in geographic terms while
the man‘s clothing restricts him to the home. Their costuming thus reverses the spheres
of influence: the woman is now the one who goes about in public while her husband is
restricted to the home. From all appearances, it is the wife who is physically more
powerful than the man, a notion in direct conflict with arguments against women‘s
suffrage which held that a woman should not be given the vote since she lacks the
physical strength on which authority is based (Massie 10). But this is a nightmare vision
of the direction men and women at the time were headed: the whole world is being
turned upside down. Men are weakening as investigations into the health of men had
asserted since the Boer War, as we noted in the invasion chapter, and women are
becoming more physically aggressive.
The idea of such a New Woman existing undoubtedly seems far-fetched, but there
was a related reality behind such behavior, though nothing quite as extreme as this.
Women and men undoubtedly became physically violent with each other in years past,
especially in those cases where the woman is actually larger than her husband, but
traditionally, at any rate, we think of women as more docile creatures than men. It is men
who come home drunk and storm about and women who are on the receiving end of this
violence. The idea that men might be treated as they treated women was horrifying to the
end of the century male, as Walter Besant‘s dystopian anti-feminist novel, The Revolt of
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Man (1882), asserts.38 In Besant‘s novel, women are in power, both at home and in the
nation. It is women who teach and preach and govern, and men who must make
themselves attractive so that they can make the best marriage they can. This often means
that younger men marry older, more powerful women, regardless of whether or not they
are particularly attracted to them. The situation is unbearable because of its
unnaturalness, according to the book‘s logic, and one man, Lord Chester, who in a world
of male succession would have been king of England, ultimately leads a revolt against the
social order, overturning it and restoring male patriarchy to England. Ironically, there is
no indication that Besant himself, who saw men‘s denial of education, career, and the
ability to move freely about the streets unaccompanied as horrific, had any sympathy for
women in the same situation. Apparently, such denials of rights were only the way
things ought to be. The real problem, Besant seems to be saying in this novel, is that men
might lose their power. Certainly, the behavior of some women just a few years after the
publication of Besant‘s novel seemed to indicate that there might be something to the
fearful predictions he was making as women, acting completely out of keeping with
traditional rules of feminine behavior, destroyed works of art in the British Museum or
fought in the streets (Caygill 48; ―The New Woman—She Shows Fight‖ n.p.).39 Such
38
The Revolt of Man, according to Besant‘s account in his autobiography, suffered a slow start in sales (its
reception, Besant says, was ―at first extremely cold‖), but once ―an article in the Saturday Review came
out, it enjoyed great success. ―In five or six weeks,‖ Besant writes, ―we had got through about nine
thousand copies.‖ It even attracted the attention of feminists, who, Besant notes, ―never ceased to abuse the
book and the author‖ (212).
39
Consider, as just one example, the case of Mrs. Alice Madeline Wackerbarth‘s attack on a pedestrian
named Florence Bly, whom she almost ran over on her bicycle and then promptly proceeded to thrash in
anger. See ―The New Woman—She Shows Fight‖ in the July 20, 1895 issue of The Illustrated Police
News.
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situations as these were undoubtedly the exception, but the idea of women stepping
outside their traditional roles was, as we have seen, a concern. Writers dealt with these
issues in various ways. Many, as we have seen in the mummy narrative, sought, even
when portraying women as powerful, dangerous beings, did their best to tame the chaos,
with powerful women surrendering their power to the men in their lives. Other times,
writers of these tales in addition to presenting powerful women compounded the problem
by depicting weak and/or feminized men. Often the stories did both.
Ambrose Pratt‘s novel, The Living Mummy (1910), is one of those novels that
did both. Written in a time in which the militant actions of the suffragettes were part of
the social fabric, the novel pretends at times to sympathize with the modern feminist,
though its ultimate conclusion is that gender relations should return to what they had
always been, the man in control, the woman content to let him be so. Shrewish women
are tamed, feminized men shamed, and the whole of society rescued by the novel‘s
narrator, the dominant Dr. Hugh Pinsent, an intelligent, powerfully built archaeologist
and medical doctor, who, by his own account, is prone to dominate those around him.
The story is fairly straightforward. It opens with a scene in Egypt where Pinsent,
a medical doctor as well as a published authority in Egyptology, is busy working on a
book when he is approached by May Ottley and her father, the famous Egyptologist, Sir
Robert Ottley. They ask for the loan of some of his men to help them with a mummy
they have discovered and from this point forward Pinsent is drawn into their lives. The
novel contains a mix of the supernatural and the detective story: May and Pinsent, for
example, see a floating head of a mummy at the Ottleys‘ campsite and Pinsent, despite its
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several appearances, dismisses it as supernatural. As the tale progresses, this same
mummy is discovered to be the murderer of May‘s fiancé and Pinsent‘s friend, Captain
Frankfort Weldon. Pinsent, then, sets about trying to solve the case, ultimately coming
face to face with the mummy, a creature of which it is ultimately difficult to say whether
or not he is supernatural or merely mortal. The story concludes when Pinsent overcomes
the chief villain in the tale, Dr. William Bellville and May and Pinsent marry and retire to
a small village, putting all that they have been through behind them.
The story has a great deal to say about gender, as characters succeed or fail in
meeting traditional gender expectations. In terms of what is presented as successful
masculinity, one need look no further than Pinsent himself. For those who measure
masculinity in assertiveness, rationality, and physical power, Pinsent is a man‘s man. He
tends, furthermore, to be something less than one of feminism‘s greatest supporters. His
conversations with May Ottley, the woman with whom he soon falls in love, are often
belligerent and chauvinistic. He is an admirer of womankind, but his ideas, at least to
modern ears, sound old-fashioned. But when he talks with his friend Dixon Hubbard, it
is difficult to say with certainty just how much of what he says he actually believes.
Based on what he says to Hubbard it sounds like he is fundamentally opposed to the
women‘s movement, but his motivation in making this speech, a promise to Hubbard‘s
wife , suggests the possibility that Pinsent is merely acting as a provocateur. Hubbard
begins:
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―Your views are somewhat narrow. For years past the world has
been allowing an ever-increasing license to woman. And who shall say
that it is wrong! Woman is a reasoning, responsible being. I---―
―Nonsense, Hubbard,‖ I interrupted. ―Woman is the weaker
vessel, and the more she is restricted the better for her own protection.
Look at the Divorce Court! Thousands of marriages are every year
dissolved. That is all owing to the greater freedom which men have
conceded woman of latter years. Divorce was, comparatively speaking, an
unknown quantity when men asserted the right to confine their wives in
proper bounds and forced them to observe and practice the domestic
virtues both for occupation and amusement. Look around you and
consider what has been brought about by the unwise relaxation of the old,
sound laws! A race of social moths and drones and gad-flies has been
created, whose chief business in life it is to amuse themselves; whose
pleasure it is to spend money often earned with difficulty by devoted
fools; whose delight it is to ensnare and to deceive their former tyrants;
whose estimate of motherhood is an avoidable and loathsome human
incident; whose morality is a resolution to preserve their immorality from
public criticism; whose faith is a shibboleth composed of superstitious
formulae, and whose religion is occasionally to attend divine service in
some fashionable church arrayed in the latest thing in headgear and a chic
French gown. (198-99)
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Pinsent‘s ―tirade‖ (his word) touches on numerous concerns that had been held at one
time or another about women: they are not rational (when Hubbard remarks that women
are ―reasoning‖ and ―responsible,‖ Pinsent cries ―Nonsense.‖), they are not faithful (the
very thing that Hubbard had feared about his own wife, whom he believed had only
married him for his money), they no longer regard motherhood as a state to be desired,
and their morality is questionable.
It seems fairly certain that we are not to take this statement as fully expressive of
what Pinsent believes since his behavior throughout the narrative suggests that he may be
closer in his opinion to what he has expressed here than he wants to admit. Pinsent‘s
treatment of May illustrates the point. Almost from the beginning, Pinsent and May are
bickering. May is an intelligent, assertive woman, responsible for her father, Sir Robert
Ottley‘s, reputation as an Egyptologist since it is she who does the majority of the
scholarly work. Pinsent, nevertheless, treats her in a way that she ―resent[s],‖ leading her
to tell him, ―‗I am as reasonable a being as yourself,‘‖ an idea of which, judging by his
actions, he is not entirely convinced (38). He treats her like a child, going so far as to
pick her up and carry her from the room where he is about to remove a bullet from her
father‘s body because he can see that she is worn out and should go to bed. His
descriptions of her, moreover, often make reference to ways she is childlike: after she
has ―cried herself to sleep‖ shortly after he has taken her from the room for the reasons
just indicated, he finds her asleep, ―breathing like a child;‖ and in a later argument he
says to her, ―Peace, peace,‖ . . . . You foolish, foolish child, you are wasting forces that
were given you for quite another purpose‖ (40). In essence, he is speaking to her, in the
135
terms of Transactional Analysis, not as an adult to an adult, but as a father to a child and
she, quite reasonably, resents it.40 His opinion of her in these opening chapters is that she
―hate[s] [her] sex‖ and is in need of a ―dressing down‖ (40; 21). She, in turn, thinks him
a bully.
Pratt allows his hero a great deal of success in his relationship to women, not in
his being some kind of Lothario, but in his ability to gain their trust and to ultimately
―reform‖ the one woman he loves, turning her into a more traditional wife and mother by
the end of the novel. Despite his often caustic responses to May, the woman he
eventually marries, it is to him that she turns when in trouble, just as Lady Helen does
when she needs someone to help her repair her relationship with her husband, Dixon
Hubbard. Pinsent does these things, because, as a believer in women as the weaker sex,
he thinks it his duty to provide for them in the same way that earlier generations had
done. He recognizes, as do those around him, that such ideas are old-fashioned: when he
goes on his anti-woman tirade with Hubbard, Hubbard advises him to ―‗not advertise
those opinions,‖ and looks down on him with a sense of superiority (199); and Lady
Helen, on asking him for his help in rescuing her marriage, tells him she is aware that
―‗knight-errants are out of fashion now-a-days‘‖ (171). He is, moreover, successful with
40
Dr. Eric Berne, the originator of the theory of Transactional Analysis, posited that each person carries
within him- (or her-) self three ego states, which he refers to as the ―Parent,‖ ―Adult,‖ and ―Child.‖ When
functioning in the ―Parent‖ ego state, the individual behaves as a parent would, taking charge of others,
giving commands, and so forth. The ―Adult‖ functions as a rational individual, who is less judgmental than
the ―Parent‖ and treats others as adults; the ―Adult‖ is also responsible for ―mediating‖ between the
―Parent‖ and the ―Adult‖ within every person. The ―Child‖ is the person in which ―reside intuition,
creativity and spontaneous drive and enjoyment,‖ but it is subject, from time to time, to the disapproval of
the ―Parent.‖ This disapproval and dominance is what is going on in the interaction between Pinsent and
May Ottley. See Berne‘s Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships, (Ballantine, 1992),
especially chapters 2 and 3 for additional information.
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asserting his rule over May as she, though a very independent woman, submits to his
authority (as a physician and a man) when he tells her that her father‘s life depends upon
it. His commands are seldom truly self-serving, though it is easy to imagine that a man
known among his friends as being ―a natural autocrat‖ and among those not his friends
―as an arrogant and self-assertive egoist,‖ might well derive personal satisfaction from
such obedience (54). For the most part, instead, the commands he gives or the actions he
takes are for the good of others. Her tells May, for instance, to get rest so that she may
better tend to her father when she is on duty as his nurse; he also makes a unilateral
decision to move Sir Robert from the enclosed area near the mummy to a place where he
might get more air. Pinsent, in essence, is a man who, because of his old-fashioned idea
about chivalry and the duties of man, cares for and protects others as the Victorian ideal
required.
Pratt attempts to make Pinsent‘s masculinity even more attractive as he contrasts
it with the other men in the story who can never measure up to the standards that Pinsent
has set. In terms of physical power, it would be very difficult indeed to match Pinsent,
for, as he tells May and her father, he is ―‗as strong as six [men],‘‖ and he proves it when
he removes May from Sir Robert‘s sick bed and then places the lid of the sarcophagus,
which May tells him had taken six Arabs to lift earlier, to block her entrance back in (4).
He makes use of this strength throughout the novel, moreover, as he wrestles with an
invisible mummy and with Dr. William Belleville and his accomplices, who seek to
destroy him. He is, in essence, what today in the movies would be called an ―action
hero.‖ In a world where there was great concern about a degenerating British race,
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Pinsent serves as a fictional example of the desired physical type. This depiction of
Pinsent is significant because Pinsent counters the fear of what was becoming of men at
the time. Here was a picture of an heroic man, physically and mentally in control of
every situation in which he found himself. He could defeat any enemy and assert control
over any woman with whom he came in contact. Pinsent solves imaginatively the
problem of a defeated masculine population. Through their imaginations, men could
vicariously enjoy his success and feel better about themselves.
Even before the Boer War when so much attention had been given to the problem
of a physically failing manhood, young men were going to gyms to develop their
muscles.41 Having muscles was becoming an important part of the masculine ideal.
Earlier generations had constructed masculinity differently, the aristocratic male being
portrayed as ―the unmarked body, impermeable to demands from the outside world,‖
such as the seemingly effeminate Sir Walter in Jane Austen‘s Persuasion (Michie 413).
The ideal of masculinity, however, changed over the years as Victorians moved from the
old model of masculinity, which they saw as ―increasingly self-indulgent, immoral, and,
indeed, effeminate,‖ and replaced it with the concept of the ideal man as capitalist, a
notion best known probably through chapter four of Thomas Carlyle‘s Past and Present,
―Captains of Industry‖ (Michie 413). Muscle and morality were later added to the mix
41
The Boer War (1899-1902), according to Thomas Heyck, was to Britain what Vietnam was to the United
States. The British army, one of the greatest military powers on earth, should have been able to defeat their
opponents in this conflict, a group of South African ―Dutch farmers‖ (Spencer 204) in quick time, but such
was not the case. The conflict greatly compromised Britain‘s reputation as a military power. It was also in
this time, according to Kathleen Spencer, that ―the recruiting campaign‖ for the war ―discovered the
physical inadequacies of the men from London‘s East-End slums,‖ where the men were discovered to be
―alarmingly undersized, frail, and sickly‖ (204).
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as the idea of Muscular Christianity became part of the notion of what it meant to be a
man in Victorian England. The term, originating from a review by T. C. Sandars of
Charles Kingsley‘s Two Years Ago( 1857), signified the idea ―that participation in sport
could contribute to the development of Christian morality, physical fitness, and ‗manly‘
character‖ (Watson et. al par. 1). By the last years of the century, the importance of the
moral aspect of the concept had lessened, but musculature remained a dominant concern
(Boyd 46). Late nineteenth century magazines, as concern with the ―muscular ideal . . .
became increasingly prevalent,‖ began to feature heroes who could measure up to the
―images of bulging muscles and naked virility‖ that were more and more prominent
(Swiencicki 782). In fact, according to ―[o]ne study of magazine articles, . . . the most
frequently emphasized traits of heroes in the 1890s were their impressive size and
strength‖ (Swiencicki 782). This is hardly surprising since the ―growing physical fitness
movement [of the 1880s] . . . linked physical prowess with masculinity and offered a
panacea to urban and moral degeneration‖ (Spurr 287-88). By the time of the Boer War
and afterwards, musculature would become even more important as a result of the
embarrassment of a British race that could no longer meet the expectations of the
military. Muscular heroes might provide at least a fictional fix of the problem.
Though much of mummy fiction did indeed provide a fictional restitution of male
power as we have seen repeatedly in the examples above, numerous narratives, besides
depicting the strong male figure, also portray the weak or effeminate, the men who did
not measure up to conventional standards of masculinity. In so doing, these narratives
make a judgment about the value of masculinity: the strong, the powerful, the decisive
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man, the tales tell us, are worthy; those who are weak, at best, of questionable value, and
at worst, despicable. The weak characters facilitate our understanding of the problem of
shifting gender roles that frightened traditionalists, and help us, in their opposition to
what is honored, to see what is feared and what is desired.
Physical and mental strength, as we have seen, was an important part of the
masculine ideal, and the heroes in mummy stories ordinarily fulfill that expectation. But
occasionally a character, sometimes even the book‘s protagonist, lacks one or the other.
Such is the case with Ralph Lavenham, the protagonist of Iras, a Mystery.
Lavenham‘s
weakness is the result of a brain fever he contracted while in Egypt, and it is the excuse
others use to account for what they consider to be his hallucinations of Iras. The upshot
is that not only is Lavenham‘s masculinity compromised by his physical weakness, but,
more importantly, by his supposedly jeopardized rationality, the latter of which was
considered a very necessary part of masculinity as it was then constructed (Tosh 180).
Women were supposed to be less rational than men, more prone to the roller coaster of
emotions than men as a result of what Elaine Showalter, in The Female Malady: Women,
Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980, called the ―‗diseases of periodicity‖ (qtd. in
Hurley 120). According to Showalter, this meant that, as the thinking of the time went,
―‗women were more vulnerable to insanity than men ‗‖ since their bodies ―interfered with
their sexual, emotional, and rational control.‖ Men, on the other hand, were not supposed
to suffer from these illnesses because the difference in biology produced a difference in
mind (qtd. in Hurley 120). The man, therefore, whose rationality is suspect is suffering
from a weakness of mind associated with womankind. Everett attenuates her hero‘s
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predicament to some extent by giving him masculine characteristics as we have seen
when looking at Iras‘s unusually passive tendencies, causing Lavenham to have to care
for her. After Iras‘s disappearance, however, it is Lavenham who needs to be cared for
when he collapses. The doctors treating him and the old parson who finds him in the
snow hear his ramblings about Iras, a woman who, as far as those who have recently seen
him, have never seen, think he has lost his reason. Even Lavenham‘s friend Knollys
seems to think so in the beginning, though he begins to believe in Iras after letters from
witnesses indicate their having seen her. Yet even with this new evidence, the rational
minds of those men around Lavenham doubt his sanity, for his tale of marriage to a
resurrected mummy and then her eventual disintegration into dust seems too far-fetched:
the last doctor attending Lavenham suspects that his brain has taken the existence of a
real woman named Iras and turned her into an imaginary mummy. Knollys, though he is
convinced of the existence of a woman named Iras, in the final analysis, does not know
what to make of the whole tale. As a result, Lavenham‘s sanity, at the very least, is
questionable and this loss places him in a position as a lesser man. In losing his reason,
or at least appearing to have done so, Lavenham thus loses one of the most important
masculine characteristics that he could have. As the protagonist in the narrative,
however, he is not thrust as far into the masculine horrors of femininity as he might be.
Such fates are reserved for the wicked (male) characters, who are shown not only to be
morally corrupt, but effeminate in one way or another: in their bodies, in their minds, or
in a combination of the two.
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Edward Bellingham in Doyle‘s short story, ―Lot No. 249,‖ is feminized in both
body and mind. The complete opposite of the athletic, hard-working, levelheaded
Abercrombie Smith, the hero of the story, Bellingham is ―a flabby, pale-faced man,‖ a
coward prone to hysterics (529). His muscles are not toned and his pale complexion
suggests a complete lack of interest in sports and other outdoor activities. A brilliant
linguist, his interests are all of the mind. And despite his obvious discipline in academic
matters, because of his obesity and the assumed lack of alimentary discipline—―fat
people in nineteenth-century Britain were assumed to have large appetites‖—he would be
considered a man lacking that essential characteristic of the ideal capitalist male, ―selfcontrol‖ (Huff , ―The Fat Man Abroad‖ 2; Michie 413). Two scenes are most suggestive
of Bellingham‘s effeminacy, the scene where he first brings his mummy to life and the
scene where Smith forces Bellingham to destroy his mummy and his papers so that he
may never again resurrect the creature.
The first of these scenes portrays Bellingham in his room having passed out,
apparently the result of some great shock to his system. His color is bad, his heart
beating rapidly, and he is unconscious. Worst of all, perhaps, is the fact that he has ―been
shrieking‖ uncontrollably. As he comes to and sees what has happened, he declares
himself a ―fool‖ and then ―burst[s] into peal after peal of hysterical laughter‖ (531).
Smith, in contrast to Bellingham‘s hysterical performance, behaves admirably as he
examines the weaker man, shaking Bellingham and doing his best to restore order.
Bellingham, however, is all nerves: he has lost his reason, his control, and has passed
out, his constitution being too weak to handle the shock to which it has been subjected.
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Men were not supposed to be like this; women were. George J. Romanes, the
―eminent Darwinist scientist‖ and expert in the fields of ―physiology, psychology and
evolution,‖ writing in May 1887 in an article published in the Nineteenth Century called
―Mental Differences Between Men and Women,‖ noted that women were ―almost always
less under control of the will—more apt to break away, as it were, from the restraint of
reason, and to overwhelm the mental chariot in disaster‖ (―Romanes, George John‖; 657).
One way in which this unbalance of reason showed itself, Romanes wrote, was in ―the
overmastering form of hysteria‖ (657). In this way, Bellingham shows himself to be
effeminate, for he cannot control his emotions. His will is too weak to maintain control,
so he must be rescued by what readers of the time would have judged as the better man.
His flabby body and weak will resulting in hysteria mark him as effeminate.42
Bellingham is once more revealed as an effeminate character in the concluding
scene where Smith comes to his room and forces him to destroy his mummy and all of
his valuable papers. In this scene it is Smith, not Bellingham, who is in control.
Bellingham, for much of the story, has had things well under control as a result of his
superior intellect, which he uses to control his mummy to commit acts of violence, but
that intellect cannot stand against the sheer force, both mental and physical, that Smith
brings to bear. Armed with a pistol and his own determination to make matters right
where the law cannot, Smith acts with a decisiveness that cannot be overcome. Smith‘s
42
Surprising, despite the culture‘s assignment of hysteria to women, according to Max Nordau, author of
the controversial study entitled simply Degeneration, hysteria is not primarily a woman‘s illness. Writing
of the hysterical, Nordau notes, ―it must not be thought that [the hysterical] are met with exclusively, or
even preponderantly, among females, for they are quite as often, perhaps oftener, found among males‖
(25).
143
every action is deliberate: he ascends the stairs and goes into Bellingham‘s room,
uninvited. He looks ―deliberately round him‖ as he enters the room and ―close[s] the
door‖ behind him, ―lock[s] it,‖ then seats himself, once again, ―deliberately‖ (543). He
does not waste any words with Bellingham, but takes out a ―long amputating-knife‖ and
―[throws] it down in front of Bellingham,‖ telling him, ―‗Now, then . . . . Just get to work
and cut up that mummy‘‖(543). Bellingham tries to resist at first, but he turns pale when
Smith threatens to ―‗put a bullet through [his] brain‖ (543). After a few moments of
trying to turn Smith from his purpose, Smith‘s finger ―twitch[ing] upon the trigger,‖
Bellingham ―screams‖ his acquiescence (544). He acts in ―frantic haste,‖ obviously
horrified by Smith‘s inexorable purpose. Following Smith‘s orders, he cuts up his
mummy and destroys his papers, though, after his mummy is gone, he tries to negotiate
with Smith so that he may at least ―copy‖ the contents of the scrolls he is being
commanded to destroy (544). He is utterly powerless before Smith. He is completely
emasculated.
Other villains in other stories are similarly feminized, either by the heroes in the
tales or by the author‘s description of them. Dr. William Belleville, the brilliant but
villainous mad scientist of Pratt‘s novel, The Living Mummy, is treated with contempt at
one point by Hugh Pinsent, the novel‘s narrator, when he ―bowed him out of the room as
deferentially as if he were a woman‖ (139). The eponymous character of Pharos, the
Egyptian, moreover, is described in such a way as to make clear his loss of reason and
cowardice in a storm when aboard his yacht as he cowers in the corner while our hero
manages to conduct himself bravely; and Laurens Djama, the brilliant but unstable
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physicist of Griffith‘s The Romance of Golden Star, is feminized both in his relation to
Vilcaroya after his unsuccessful betrayal of the latter and in his own loss of reason. Men
are supposed to be in control, both of themselves and of their reason, but these characters
fail miserably. They are not reasonable men, but cowards, out of control of themselves
and subject to supposedly better men. Their presence in these narratives is indicative of
the sense that many Britons felt about their culture and their racial stock. The days of
assumed progress, were over, Patrick Brantlinger tells us, and the idea of impending
doom or a sense of ―‗rottenness‘‖ in the nation were expressed in ―[m]uch of the literary
culture of the period‖ (230). Weak or feminized men were part and parcel of this sense
of degeneration that the strong male figures must work against so that masculinity might
once more be restored.
This last observation brings us to one final consideration of masculinity before we
conclude this chapter: the relationship of hypermasculinity and homosexuality. For the
most part, as I have noted earlier, the masculine heroes in mummy fiction are simple
responses to a world in which women are becoming increasingly powerful. Strong male
heroes are simply a way of restoring control in that world. One relationship, however,
has an interesting twist to it that is ordinarily not seen in these stories: the relationship
between Captain Frankfort Weldon and Dr. Hugh Pinsent. Pinsent, the hypermasculine
hero of Pratt‘s novel, The Living Mummy, is a man‘s man, a more masculine character
than all those others appearing within the pages of the book. He is strong, willing to
fight, intelligent but not too smart to be a likeable male hero. He is the person on whom
all others seem to depend and the chief enemy of those who seek evil. He is religious,
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but not overly so (he calls himself a ―reasonably bad Christian‖ [98]). He is the hero of
Captain Weldon, who tells him, that, in comparison to Pinsent, he feels like ―‗a silly girlman‘‖ (76).
Weldon‘s and Pinsent‘s relationship is similar to public schoolboy crushes of the
latter nineteenth century (Bristow 82). Weldon admires Pinsent and Pinsent enjoys the
admiration. Yet there appears, on one level at least, to be something akin to homosexual
desire in the relationship. Though I would not claim that a homosexual relationship
exists between the two, there is nevertheless an undercurrent of the homoeroticism that
had alarmed many contemporary observers by the end of the century. Things had come
to such a point by the twentieth century, in fact, that close relationship between
heterosexual males began to suffer because of the fear of being thought homosexual
(Bristow 89). The end of Chapter VII and the beginning of Chapter VIII of the novel
demonstrate homoerotic undertones in the relationship between Weldon and Pinsent. The
relevant scene in the novel begins after Pinsent has been brought back to the Ottleys‘
camp in Egypt. In this scene, Weldon acts very much as the younger student enamored
with the older boy at public school and Pinsent as the older boy enjoying the adulation.
The scene opens with what might easily be described as a seduction scene.
Weldon comes to him and offers him his tent, a bath tub, and ―fresh linen‖ (74). Pinsent
gratefully accepts and enters the tent, which he describes as ―a sort of lady‘s bower. . . .
The floor was laid with rugs, and the sloped canvas walls were hung with silken frills;
and women‘s photographs [they were photos of May Ottley] littered the fold-up dressing
table‖ (74). Fresh linen, ―composed of the very finest silk,‖ was laid out on Weldon‘s
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―damask-covered cot.‖ Everything was luxurious in this room (―Even the socks were
silk‖) (75).
After Pinsent has bathed and shaved, he sits down on Weldon‘s cot, and here
Weldon, who is nowhere else feminized, begins to sound surprisingly effeminate. When
Pinsent comments on the scar left on his face when Weldon struck him earlier, Weldon
asks him why he didn‘t ―‗break me up while you were about it,‘‖ noting, ―‗You could
have, easily enough. Lord! how big and strong you are‘ (76). The sound of this latter
comment, at least to our modern ears, sounds extraordinarily like a heterosexual woman
flattering a man on whom she has designs. Weldon follows this comment up a moment
later with additional praise of Pinsent‘s masculinity when he says, in response to
Pinsent‘s comment that he [Pinsent] is ― ‗ugly,‘‖: ―‗A man ought to be ugly and stronglooking like you. I‘d give half my fortune to possess that jaw‘‖ (76). After the flattery,
Weldon offers Pinsent a cigar and suggests the latter rest until lunch is done: ―‗This box
of Cabanas is for you. They‘re prime. I‘ve more in my kit when they are finished. Lie
down and rest while you smoke one, won‘t you? Lunch won‘t be ready for an hour yet,
and you must be fagged‘‖ (76).
The scene described here seems to have the elements of a scene of seduction: the
seducer offers the object of the seduction numerous sorts of bodily comforts as he begins
to work his seduction: clean linen and socks of silk, fine cigars, a tub for bathing, and a
―damask-covered cot . . . composed of the very finest silk‖ on which to rest in addition to
comments designed to tickle the ear of the auditor. Everything is designed to please the
recipient. This is a world of luxury, more than one might expect in a relationship
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between heterosexual men. The technique seems reminiscent of the seductive methods
used on young men by one of literature‘s most famous homosexuals of the fin de siècle,
Oscar Wilde, who, according to evidence that emerged in Wilde‘s trial against John
Douglas, the Marquess of Queensberry in March and April of 1895, involved entertaining
those same young men in private rooms in fine restaurants before entering into sexual
relations.43
Nothing literally sexual comes of this relationship, despite the hints that seem to
suggest its possibility. In fact, despite the seductiveness of the scene, Pratt seems to be at
pains to prevent his hero from being perceived in such a way. Early on in the scene, Pratt
makes sure readers understand that Weldon is engaged to May and is smitten with her. A
great deal of attention, furthermore, after this scene has been laid out, is all about May,
with whom both Weldon and Pinsent are in love.44 To have indulged a homoerotic
relationship between these two would have resulted in a loss of masculinity and would
thus have defeated all the efforts Pratt had made in constructing a super masculine hero
and would have equally compromised the moral standing of both men. Nevertheless, the
scene offers an interesting twist on the question of Pinsent‘s hypermasculinity and impels
us to consider what truth lay behind his relationship with Weldon. The language we have
observed in this scene is undoubtedly sexually charged. The question is why. In this
43
The court transcripts reveal Queensberry‘s counsel, Edward Carson, repeatedly questioning Wilde on the
dinners that he gave for young men. According to Carson‘s version of events, Wilde would feed these
young men sumptuous feasts and ply them with champagne as part of an attempt to seduce them, as he did,
according to Carson, with a young man named Carson (276).
44
A full analysis of the homoerotic undertones of this story is beyond my scope. For a more complete
analysis, see Eve Sedgwick‘s Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (Columbia
UP, 1985).
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case, it is Weldon who has used the effeminate language to praise the brawny Pinsent, but
in an earlier passage in the novel, Pinsent himself uses similar language when he
describes the beginning of his friendship with Weldon. In this latter case, it is Pinsent
who speaks of ―[conquering]‖ his friend and of ―[falling] in love‖ with his friend‘s
―manly way‖ of responding to the beating which he had just given the smaller, frailer
man. In fairness, we must consider the possibility of changing expressions of
heterosexual affection in earlier times, but, if this is in fact the case, it does not translate
well in our own time. It appears, in the final analysis, that what we have here may be a
too insistent proclamation of hypermasculinity as a way to hide the possibility of
homosexual desire.
Pratt‘s efforts to preserve the powerful position of his hero in his novel are
indicative of the efforts made throughout the narratives we have examined in this chapter.
A threatened traditional masculine power required a response for those who felt
endangered by an increasingly powerful women‘s movement. Mummy narratives
provided an excellent vehicle for considering such concerns with the numerous powerful
women. The stories did not concern the ordinary people of ancient times, but, with the
exception of the comic story of ―The Mummy of Thompson-Pratt,‖ with those
individuals who were in powerful positions, whether by reason of their relationship of
those actually in power, such as those cases where we are talking about daughters of
powerful priests, for example, or were royalty, powerful in their own right, as in the case
of Queen Tera and Queen Nitocris. By creating powerful women, moreover, and
engaging them in relationships with ordinary men of the present, authors of mummy
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fiction were able to correct the problem of a too-powerful womankind and restore men
and women to a more traditional balance of power.
Skeptics and Believers in Mummy Detective Fiction
Even those only cursorily acquainted with the history of the Victorian era and its
literature acknowledge that many Victorians experienced a loss of faith in the face of
scientific theories developed since Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell first published their
views on the evolution of the physical world. Religious doubt was expressed by the likes
of Matthew Arnold and Alfred Tennyson, the former famously melancholic over the
retreating ―Sea of Faith‖ in ―Dover Beach‖ and the latter struggling with religious issues
following the death of his friend A.H. Hallam in his celebrated composition, In
Memoriam.
The sense of loss and struggle for belief as evidenced in these poems was
representative of the loss experienced by many at the time. Though there were certainly
individuals in this period who discovered a new-found freedom as a result of recent
scientific theories as well as those who remained committed to orthodoxy, there were a
number of others, as Janet Oppenheim, author of The Other World: Spiritualism and
Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914, reminds us, who felt themselves at a loss in
an ―age of skepticism,‖ who yet, at the same time, could simply not bring themselves to
accept the old orthodoxy (Sheridan 34; Oppenheim 4; 113).
Psychic researcher Walter
Leaf, for instance, in a letter to his fiancée shortly before their marriage in 1894, noted,
―For me, reason refuses to be satisfied with Christianity—or at least with Christian
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formulas—and gropes, however blindly, for something more. I think it always will‖ (qtd.
in Oppenheim 119). Henry Sidgwick, a clergyman‘s son and one of the founding
members of the Society for Psychical Research, an institution devoted to applying
scientific research methods to matters psychic and supernatural, likewise felt a sense of
loss with regard to his early Christian faith (Oppenheim 81). Brought up in an Anglican
family and originally intent on pursuing a career in the church, Sidgwick later found
himself unable to accept the beliefs of his childhood and thus abandoned those plans. It
was not that he had no interest in spiritual matters, as his later involvement with the SPR
demonstrates, it was just that ―‗the scientific atmosphere‘‖ of the time had ―‗paralyzed‘‖
his ―‗old theological trains of thought and sentiment,‘‖ leaving him in a condition of
uncertainty with regard to spiritual matters (qtd. in Oppenheim 113). He was, as Janet
Oppenheim expresses it, a man ―too committed to open-minded inquiry to wallow in
despair, [but] . . . too honest to allow himself the luxury of abiding hope‖ (113).
The obvious response for Sidgwick and others like him was to form an
organization which would use scientific and rational means to look into issues of the
supernatural and the paranormal and, on that basis and that basis alone, form opinions
about the truth or falsity of these matters. Such an organization was the SPR. Founded
in 1882 by W. F. Barrett, F.W. H. Myers, Edmund Gurney, and Sidgwick, the SPR
brought scientific method and intellectual rigor to bear on questions of immortality as
well as experiments looking into issues such as extra-sensory perception (Gauld 137-38).
The SPR enabled those so influenced by the late-Victorian scientific frame of mind to
delve into questions of an other-worldly nature while satisfying their need for rational
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investigation of occult matters.45 Those who investigated such concerns naturally
reached various conclusions, some never being convinced of the reality of other-worldly
phenomena, while others became stout believers and published volumes on their findings.
Those researchers who remained skeptics did so, according to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s
numerous complaints in The History of Spiritualism, because of the intrusive machinery
and skeptical attitudes they brought into their research, which made the possibility of any
discovery of an otherworldly reality unlikely. Those who were successful, on the other
hand, approached the research less intrusively and skeptically, but nevertheless, they
would argue, with something approaching scientific rigor. Doyle, one of the leading
proponents of spiritualism in the final years of his life, made numerous investigations into
the occult in which he was able to reach conclusions that he believed had scientific
validity and were thus, to his way of thinking, more valuable than any revealed religion.
He expressed this confidence in a filmed interview on the subject made late in his life:
When I talk on this subject, I‘m not talking about what I believe; I‘m not
talking about what I think; I‘m talking about what I know. There‘s an
enormous difference, believe me, between believing a thing and knowing
a thing. I‘m talking about things that I‘ve handled, that I‘ve seen, that I‘ve
heard with my own ears, and always, mind you, in the presence of
witnesses. I never risk hallucination. I usually in most of my experiments
45
It might be well to note at this time, however, that, as Janet Oppenheim points out in The Other World,
the SPR ―was not a novel organization when it was founded in 1882,‖ but ―bore some resemblance to
several ancestors, including the many spiritualist societies that had waxed and waned in Britain since the
1850s and some of whose members joined the SPR at its inception‖ (123).
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have had six, eight or ten witnesses, all of whom have seen and heard the
same things that I have done. (Arthur Conan Doyle Interviewed)
Such expressions of belief are difficult to fathom when one considers Doyle as the
author of that über-skeptic Sherlock Holmes, but the fact of his insistence on evidence,
however bizarre it may appear to most of us, is consonant with the logical workings of a
Holmes. Doyle, like many other seekers of his time, wanted both the faith that allowed a
belief in the supernatural as well as some form of evidence on which to base that faith.
This same impulse to join the scientific and the otherworldly, the world of matter and of
spirit, was at work in mummy detective fiction. In some cases, as in those stories
involving occult detectives such as Flaxman Low and Dr. John Silence, science and
matters of the occult are joined in figures who expertly read crime scenes and solve cases
involving otherworldly elements. Other stories, though they do not feature characters
such as these occult detectives, nevertheless manage to give their stories a scientific
flavor through characters who variously represent scientific, expert, and/or professional
classes. But they do something more, too: they recapture the sense of lost wonder that
writers like Algernon Blackwood and Sabine Baring-Gould complained of when they
bemoaned the ―robotic‖ society that science had engendered and the loss of fantasy that a
too-close investigation of the physical universe had produced (Blackwood ―Dreams and
Fairies‖ 1; Baring-Gould ―The 9.30 Up-Train‖ n.p.). And they do so in such a way that
those readers requiring scientific expertise to recapture that lost wonder may freely
engage in such fantasies through the dream of occultic science. In this manner, readers
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are able to experience the best of both worlds: the wonder of the supernatural and the
pleasure of being rational in a rational age.
The central epistemological conflict that serves as a background to stories of this
type (ghost stories and stories of the supernatural) is, as Daniel Sheridan reminds us, that
conflict that was illustrated in countless stories of the Victorian period and the romantic
age of the gothic novel where the skeptic and the believer faced off in circumstances that
could be explained either through an account of a genuine supernatural experience, what
Tzvetan Todorov, in his study of The Fantastic calls ―the marvelous‖ or through some
perfectly natural, sublunary means, or, again, in Todorov‘s terms, ―the uncanny‖ (41-42).
In stories of this type, Sheridan notes, the action will revolve around the occurrence of
some sort of supernatural event and will be responded to by two different sorts of
witnesses, one who is convinced of the supernatural nature of the event, and another who
is just as convinced that things of this sort just do not happen (33). Over the course of
events in the story, however, the skeptic will become convinced and the believer proven
right, thereby reassuring readers that there is indeed more to the world than the material.
This formula is the pattern that is followed in the majority of the mummy
detective fiction narratives, but two of the tales, Mrs. H.D. Everett‘s Iras, a Mystery and
Ambrose Pratt‘s The Living Mummy, follow another pattern in which both believer and
skeptic are represented in tales of the occult, but rather than having the skeptic converted,
the interpretation of the tale is left open in such a way that the supernatural events
recounted may or may not be true. Such tales are a part of what Todorov describes as the
―fantastic,‖ by which he means a time of hesitation or doubt in which witnesses to
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apparently supernatural events are not certain whether what they have seen has been an
actual example of a real supernatural event (the ―marvelous‖) or whether something that
can be rationally accounted for (the ―uncanny‖) (41-42). Sometimes, Todorov notes, the
hesitation between explanations is resolved within the pages of the narrative itself, as the
story is revealed to be a work of the marvelous or of the uncanny; other times, the
―ambiguity‖ of the story remains ―even beyond the narrative itself‖ (41-43). It is into this
last class of stories that Everett‘s and Pratt‘s stories belong, for though there is evidence
pointing to both rational and supernatural explanations, as we shall see, these tales raise
the issue of the existence of the supernatural, leaving open the question of whether the
marvelous or the uncanny is at work. As such, these tales are different from the majority
of the other tales we will be looking at in this chapter in that they do not make an
unequivocal case for the existence of the occult and thus do not provide the unadulterated
thrill of the joining of science and the marvelous. They, instead, put on the brakes,
reminding readers that tales of the supernatural may be nothing more than that—tales.
Nevertheless, an examination of these two exceptions are worth consideration not only
because they do such a good job of laying out the problems the authors of the other
stories must overcome in writing their convincing tales of the supernatural, but because
they engage in some of the same work that all gothic fiction does, examining in their
pages, as Fred Botting reminds us, issues dealing with the nature of reality and
―concerns‖ about contemporary problems which are ―never escaped‖ (11; 3).
The two basic approaches to tales of the occult, stories featuring real supernatural
events and those stories explainable in natural terms, had been a part of the tradition of
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supernatural tales for some time, going back at least as far as the end of the eighteenth
century when authors such as Matthew ―Monk‖ Lewis and Ann Radcliffe had taken their
contrasting approaches to such tales, with Lewis coming down on the side later labeled
the ―unexplained‖ (supernatural events are real) gothic and Radcliffe with stories labeled
―explained‖ gothic where stories were amenable to natural explanations (Todorov 41). In
the later Victorian period, occult tales tended to take one or the other of these approaches,
some explained, others supernatural. In some of these tales the division of opinion was
between individuals, skeptics on the one hand and believers on the other. In other tales,
the division of opinion was within the individual mind, a position reflecting Daniel
Sheridan‘s contention that the ―later Victorians‖ did not know what they believed (38).
Each of these types is represented by the two exceptional mummy detective fiction
narratives: Mrs. H.D. Everett‘s Iras, a Mystery, is of the former sort, pitting believer
against skeptic, while Ambrose Pratt‘s The Living Mummy, is of the latter sort as it
represents the division of opinion within the mind of its hero, Dr. Hugh Pinsent. These
stories are especially interesting since the central characters who in other stories are
either believers in the occult or converts to it are in these narratives unreliable or
unconvincing witnesses because their credibility is suspect or because they themselves
are not fully convinced of the reality of the phenomena they have observed. Thus, these
stories illustrate a dual, conflicting desire: they are not completely willing to forego the
conclusions drawn by science, but they are at the same time unwilling to say that the
supernatural does not exist. Occultic phenomena may exist, but they are not sure.
Evidence of experts seems to suggest that such things do not exist, but there is
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nevertheless at least a grain of doubt that science has all the facts. The millennia-long
belief in the existence of another world, of an existence beyond what we know
physically, was simply, as Janet Oppenheim reveals repeatedly in her study of The Other
World, hard to give up. As numerous founding members of the Society for Psychical
Research make clear, abandoning all belief in a world beyond the senses, even when
scientific evidence cannot provide the required proof, something seems to pull at them,
making them want to believe and leading them into experiment after experiment to see if
evidence of any sort can be discovered to support a non-material existence. Thus, the
skeptic wants to believe just as the believer might experience pangs of doubt.
The division of opinion in Everett‘s narrative is clearly laid out in the division
between the opinions of Ralph Lavenham, an expert Egyptologist and published author,
and the doctors and witnesses who do not see Iras when Lavenham is purportedly on his
honeymoon with her. Doubt is at the very heart of this tale, which centers on the
question of Lavenham‘s sanity, and its central question is the truth or falsity of the
existence of the novel‘s eponymous character, Iras. From Lavenham‘s point of view, Iras
is very much a real person, a mummy whom he awakened from a state of suspended
animation and married and took on a honeymoon to Scotland where she began to literally
fade away, becoming invisible to the majority of those around her and visible only to her
husband, all as a result of the persecution of an ancient Egyptian priest, Savak, who
wanted Iras for himself, and who had contrived a magical necklace that would allow Iras
to live only as long as each of the pendants of the necklace remained. As the pendants
disappeared, one by one, from the necklace, Iras began to fade away and eventually died
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once the last pendant fell. From the viewpoint of the doctors who attended Lavenham and
the many others who saw his odd behavior once Iras had disappeared, Lavenham seemed
out of his mind, a mental case, the cause of which is originally attributed to the brain
fever he had contracted while in Egypt, and later, once marriage to Iras has been proved,
considered to be a combination of a mind befogged as a result of brain fever and the fact
that Iras had been part of some sort of plot to defraud him and then had left him a broken
and deluded man.
Ambrose Pratt‘s novel, The Living Mummy, is a case of the other sort of
skepticism and belief dynamic—a mind divided against itself, torn between the evidence
of sense and an ingrained skepticism which refuses to believe. The novel‘s hero and first
person narrator, Dr. Hugh Pinsent is in many ways the ideal sort of hero for a mummy
fiction ordinarily dedicated to constructing a plot in which the supernatural events seem
real: he is rational, trained in medicine and science, and does not have an over-active
imagination, a trait, to judge by the numerous times to which it is alluded, that was highly
valued in Victorian ghost stories time and again. When questions of apparent occult
phenomena appear, he does not rush to judgment but questions what he sees, having
learned from his scientific training‖ that one cannot always accept the evidence of sense‖
(182). The testimony of such a man, were he to testify to the reality of occult
phenomena, would carry great weight. That testimony, however, is not forthcoming
because Pinsent himself, always the scientific materialist, is not convinced of the reality
of the things he sees, and for this reason he fails to provide this particular service in the
novel. When he sees the floating head of a mummy and wrestles with an invisible man,
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he does not attribute these things to the supernatural, insisting over and over again that
there must be some scientific explanation. His story instead underscores the likelihood of
a natural explanation, of some science as yet not comprehended.
The scientific minds in these two preceding narratives raise considerable doubt
about the existence of the supernatural, though in fairness, even these tales make some
room for the possibility that what has occurred has been real. The doctors in Iras never
believe Lavenham‘s story, but bits of evidence suggest that the tale itself might be real.
Similarly, Pinsent‘s inability to provide rational explanations for all that he has seen
leaves a small space for the possibility of the occult despite his continual expression of
doubt. Lavenham‘s interactions with the skeptics in his life, especially the doctors,
portray a world in which the individual is frequently at the mercy of professional others.
The doctors who consult on his case find his story insupportable and invent explanations
to account for those things he claims to have seen. The first doctor Lavenham consults
believes that Lavenham is suffering from a ―‗persistent hallucination‘‖ brought on by
―‗sunstroke‘‖ (218). Once documentation of the marriage is provided, however, the
doctor changes his mind sufficiently to allow for a marriage, yet insisting that
Lavenham‘s claim that the corpse he claims was his wife just a few short days before is
the result of a ―‗retrospective‘‖ hallucination: Lavenham undoubtedly married someone
but was abandoned. The rest was all the product of a diseased imagination (233). The
last doctor to attend him is of the same opinion: Iras was merely a ―‗delusion‘‖ resulting
from a ―previous entanglement and conspiracy,‖ though interestingly enough, this same
doctor is willing to ―[certify]‖ Lavenham ―sane enough to make a will‖ (279-80). The
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only person who might believe Lavenham‘s story of Iras, had she been present to see it, is
an expert of another sort, the ―‗clairvoyante‘‖ Madame St. Heliers. She had been present
at the beginning of the story and had seen the threatening ancient Egyptian priest, Savak,
who destroys Iras and ultimately Lavenham, and, in a letter that Lavenham does not see
before it is too late, she warns him to ―‗walk warily‘‖ and ―‗set [his] expectations low,
and neither love nor hate‘‖ since ―‗the affections as well as the passions disarm our
defences‘‖ (268; 270). Lavenham‘s friend Knollys is probably the character closest to
what might be considered a reader‘s representative in the story. For Knollys, the story is
a puzzle: ―he can neither quite credit [Lavenham] nor wholly believe the doctor‖ since
―the narrowing faculty which he calls common-sense is with him a stone of stumbling
and rock of offence, as it is to so many‖ (280). As such, the novel represents a situation
in which ordinary men and women must simply throw up their hands in surrender.
Scientists may claim to have the answers, but the conflicting data—and conflicting
opinions on that data—render a clear solution impossible. Science is not the comfort
some might wish it to be since it cannot unambiguously account for all that has happened
in the story.
Similarly, science ultimately proves itself incapable of providing answers to the
most pressing questions in Pratt‘s story of The Living Mummy. Though the novel‘s
narrator, Dr. Hugh Pinsent, asserts his skepticism numerous times, by the story‘s
conclusion, he cannot account for all that he has seen. Siding always on the side of
science whenever possible, he judges events in the light of science which has taught him
―that one cannot always accept the evidence of sense‖ (182). The suspended head of a
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bodiless mummy moving about and an encounter with an invisible man who tries to kill
him can always, to his mind, despite temporary temptation to believe otherwise, be
accounted for ―by a purely and perfectly natural cause‖ (218). The supernatural is simply
not an option for him. And quite often his skepticism is justified, as in the case where he
learns that Belleville has discovered a way to render a human being invisible. Yet there
are other cases that he simply cannot explain scientifically—especially as it regards the
mummy Ptahmes who appears numerous times throughout the narrative. By the end of
the story, we see Pinsent struggling to find a commonsensical explanation for the
mummy who saves him, going back and forth between supernatural and scientific
explanations. On seeing a modern Arab employed by Belleville, he remarks: ―‗There,
without doubt, goes the man who, in the nick of time, released me from my bonds‘‖
(284). But moments later, he remembers that ―the animated mummy of my dream [when
the deal for his release had been made] had conversed with me in the tongue of Ancient
Egypt, per medium of a slate and had seemed not to understand modern Arabic‖ and had
furthermore no left hand, while the modern Arab ―enjoyed the undiminished use of his‖
(285). Lastly, the modern Arab‘s face was not right, for, as Pinsent ―recollected,‖ the
face of the mummy in his dream expressed an ―utter deadness,‖ which the modern Arab‘s
face did not (285). The relief that he had temporarily felt in arriving at a scientific
explanation is thus eradicated as Pinsent is faced with the possibility of the supernatural.
A scientific explanation would have been a relief, a comfort, but the uncertainties of the
tale make an unambiguous explanation impossible. On the surface of Pinsent‘s narrative
is the belief that the world can be explained rationally and scientifically, but the subtext
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suggests that we simply cannot understand everything. The solution to this indecision is
provided in the last paragraph of the novel where we learn that the narrator and his
sweetheart have retired from such endeavors, he to become ―the only surgeon in a radius
of one hundred miles,‖ and she ―the schoolmistress of the district‖ (312-13). Science
cannot provide all the answers and apparently a belief in the uncontrollable world of the
supernatural is simply too much to endure. The novel thus offers us a worldview that at
least wants to think that science has the answers but that ultimately realizes that science
cannot account for all that occurs. The only release from such a frightening world, then,
is to run away, to leave such things behind, and to work in the light in occupations that
steer clear of such things. There is the possibility of doubt—there might be a rational
explanation—but we can never be entirely sure.
The remaining stories leave no such doubt, but make clear that the supernatural
occurrences which have been related in the course of their narratives were real. They do
this either by providing characters with impressive professional credentials and/or by
demonstrating a rational, scientific reading of evidence that comes to the conclusion that
the occult phenomena encountered are genuine. By employing such methods, these
writers effectually link the sense of wonder of an earlier age in which ghosts, goblins, and
fairies were imagined to exist with the scientific mind that insists on logic,
experimentation, and proof. This approach accords with the purpose of gothic literature
according to most theories on the subject as the stories link the past with the present; the
repressed ―primitive‖ beliefs of which Freud speaks in his essay on ―The Uncanny‖ are
allowed to take center stage for the duration of the narrative. The loss of wonder
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contemporary writers had complained of that had resulted from too much scientific
exploration is thus given a space in which to reconnect with the primitive mind through
the application of a pseudo-scientific treatment that not only returned readers to a state
where such beliefs might be entertained but at the same time made readers privy to the
fantasy of having access to esoteric knowledge within the safety of fiction.
The degree to which expertise, that entity that ultimately makes the reading of the
stories acceptable for the modern, scientifically-oriented reader, is either demonstrated or
simply asserted varies among the tales. In some of the stories very little time is given to
the rational reading of clues, while in others the activity of reading is more extensive.
Sometimes the simple presence of the credentialed expert seems to be enough. Professor
Franklin Marmion in George Griffith‘s The Mummy and Miss Nitocris is a case in point.
From the very first page, we know that Professor Marmion is a very special person: he
is, according to the author‘s description of him, ―one of the most celebrated
mathematicians and physicists in Europe,‖ and as an expert in both science and
mathematics, he does those things that experts typically do, including lecturing at the
university and participating in professional organizations where he enters into discussions
and presents papers (n.p.). These activities are only possible because he has undergone
extensive training and then been credentialed by the institution which provided that
training. In the process of the training, he would have learned the esoteric vocabulary
and symbols which made it possible for him to communicate mathematically and
scientifically. The influence of others on his professional standing, however, would not
have stopped at that point where he received his degree, but would have continued as he
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presented papers and talks to his peers. This process would have helped to ensure that
those ideas which he presented were of suitable quality and worth attention.
Undoubtedly, as he made such talks and presented such papers he would have
encountered opposition to those ideas. The community of experts around him would
have challenged him and required him to respond or withdraw his ideas. The benefit of
these activities would, at least theoretically speaking, have resulted in the advancement of
knowledge in his fields.
We see this process of professionalization at work in the course of the story in the
sub-plot which involves his solving of what he calls in a paper he presents to the Royal
Society ―Mathematical Impossibilities‖ (Chapter XIV). This episode does an excellent
job of portraying the professor as a professional academic. Once having decided that it is
acceptable to use his powers to solve mathematical problems previously considered
impossible—―squaring the circle and doubling the cube‖ (Chapter IV), for example—he
writes and then submits a paper for presentation to the Royal Society.46 His performance
is brilliant. Griffith‘s description of the professor‘s presentation has all the hallmarks of
what at least the average reader would consider to be mathematical expertise. The
professor demonstrates his considerable grasp of the problem as he lectures for an hour
bringing his listeners, all expert mathematicians themselves, to that place where he will
46
The theory of knowledge behind the story in this novel is one that argues that all knowledge, even
knowledge of the occult or supernatural, is one—nothing is really supernatural, it only appears to be so, to
the uninitiated. It is the idea behind Phadrig‘s conversation with Prince Oscarovitch when he tells the
prince that ―[t]here are no miracles . . . only the results of higher knowledge than that which they who see
them possess‖ (n.p.). Professor Marmion‘s actions, though applied to a mathematical problem, do not argue
for the ultimate victory of science as commonly conceived in the early twentieth century. Knowledge in its
broadest sense will bring about understanding and ultimately solve all problems, but early twentieth century
science will not.
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begin his demonstration of the mathematical impossibilities he has come to prove
possible. Though he has many who doubt his ability to prove the impossible possible,
many nevertheless reason that he must be serious in what he is proposing for ―the keenest
critic had never found Franklin Marmion wrong yet, and he had far too great a reputation
to permit himself to say in such a place that which he did not seriously mean‖ (Chapter
XIV). He fills the chalkboard in the auditorium where he works full of mathematical
symbols, all the while inviting his colleagues to take notes and see whether he has made
any errors. Because of his considerable knowledge and mathematical abilities, his
colleagues are unable to find any errors. Though the novel makes clear that the
discussion will continue for some time in conversations and additional publications from
his colleagues, the professor‘s superior intellect is established as he is able to stand before
his supposed peers with an almost godlike superiority and educate them about
mathematical problems that were supposed to be insoluble. Here was a man of intellect,
of superior ability, ultimately a man, as we shall see, able not only to explain the
inexplicable but to solve problems beyond the capability of the ordinary man. Here is an
expert, a man capable of lighting the way for others less gifted than himself and a man to
be heeded when he speaks. Thus, when a man of the professor‘s stature credits the
supernatural, readers can be expected to give his testimony greater credence than the
ordinary, run-of-the-mill mortal who would testify to such things. The professor‘s
experience thus provides readers with credible testimony that allows readers the pleasure
of the supernatural within the narrative.
166
The demonstration of rational, scientific thinking the professor has given in this
section, of course, is quite extensive and is important as it indicates the high standing of
mathematics and physics as epistemological models within early twentieth century
British society, but it is not a demonstration of the rational reading of clues, which
authors of other tales of mummy detective fiction provide in much greater detail.
Professor Marmion‘s expertise in mathematics is made to stand in for the expertise in the
occult. This substitution works, however, insofar as the expert‘s superior knowledge in
one field can transfer to another. The first-rate mind which can understand the
complexities of mathematics and physics can, the novel seems to suggest, more readily
comprehend the mysteries of the occult. Thus, the reader is given a good, solid dose of
the professor‘s brilliant scientific mind in this episode, providing the reader with a sense
of the professor as scientific expert, an authority who can be trusted when matters of an
otherworldly nature arise. The book, however, does not provide much evidence of the
professor as an adept reader of clues. Instead, the professor, because of his super-human
powers acquired in the fourth dimension, often represented mathematically as N^4 to
give its designation a more scientific flavor, is able to simply see what has happened.
True enough, he does have to do some detective work within his visions—putting
together the images of what he has seen with news from the newspaper—but so much of
the work of detection has been given to him through his visions. It is largely for this
reason that his expertise must be established elsewhere. By portraying the professor as a
man of science, Griffith is able to gather all of the positive associations of the scientist as
a rational individual who was assumed to be impartial and above the fray, much like the
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scientific expertise of Sherlock Holmes, whose procedures are modeled closely after the
medical procedures of a physician, who listens to the patient‘s complaint and makes a
diagnosis (Montgomery 300).
This association of the professor with science, moreover, added to his credibility
in the light of the use the court system had begun to make of scientific experts in their
cases in the Victorian era. Important cases had made use of scientific expertise as early
as the 1856 Palmer case, and by the mid-nineties, ―a London-based expert in the physical
sciences looked out on a rich landscape of opportunities‖ (Hamlin 488). Physicians had
also ―long served as expert witnesses, chiefly in criminal proceedings and commitments‖
and forensic medicine had become ―a standard part of the medical curriculum‖ (Hamlin
489). These individuals were highly valued because the public had been educated to
believe that scientists would be able to ―‗place the truth before the court in such manner
as to secure justice‘‖ (Colenso qtd. in Hamlin 490). And despite the fact that many
involved later learned much to their dismay that scientists would often not agree on the
science involved in a particular case, such experts were still used (Hamlin 490). So much
for the fact. In fiction, however, the scientist was often seen as the man who could
provide unambiguous answers to the questions that concerned readers, who could be the
men or women who the public had thought and hoped they were. Professor Marmion is
just such a scientist, an honest man, interested in truth and justice and the public good and
a man who could serve as an ideal witness in any court case, especially equipped in this
narrative to serve as a witness to occult reality.
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Most of the detectives in these tales, however, are actually allowed to demonstrate
for the reader their scientific method of understanding the seemingly impossible events of
the stories, though their professions continue to be primarily scientific in one way or
another. Two of these investigators, Flaxman Low and Dr. John Silence, the former from
Kate and Hesketh V. Hesketh-Prichard‘s narrative, ―The Story of Baelbrow,‖ the latter
from Algernon Blackwood‘s ―The Nemesis of Fire,‖ are professional occult detectives
specifically dedicated to the research of occult matters and are considered experts in this
field. Like their precursors in the genre, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu‘s Dr. Martin Hesselius
and Bram Stoker‘s Dr. Van Helsing, Low and Silence are learned men in an esoteric
field, conducting their investigative business in much the same way as physicians do, as
they take case histories and try out various hypotheses to account for the mysteries which
bring their clients to see them: they are, as is evident to anyone even remotely acquainted
with Sherlock Holmes, Holmesian in their method (Montgomery 299-300). They
question witnesses, examine physical evidence, and construct cases which account for the
evidence which they have seen. Other detectives in the stories are for the most part
amateurs when it comes to the occult, but nonetheless have the social status of
professionals through their vocations and handle evidence skillfully. Doyle, for example,
has Abercrombie Smith, a physician-in-training, who investigates the case of a
marauding mummy in the story of ―Lot No. 249.‖ Smith uses his skills of observation he
has developed as a result of his medical education and works his way through a series of
clues only to discover that one of his fellow students, Edward Bellingham, has through
occult arts, resurrected a mummy nearly seven feet tall, which he (Bellingham) uses for
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deadly purposes. Numerous other examples could be cited as well, but they are important
primarily because the tales use expertise to lend their narratives greater credence, not
only because the nature of the endeavors in which the detectives find themselves would
require such experts and because their presence means that their testimony to the validity
of the occult is of greater value, but also because their demonstration of reading the clues
they encounter tends to be especially convincing as it demonstrates a rational, scientific
frame of mind. 47
The reaching of conclusions based on observation of evidence is in essence a
process of reading.48 Detectives read evidence and reach conclusions in much the same
way that readers do when examining a text and the process they follow when they read is
remarkably similar to the way that scientists arrive at their conclusions regarding those
47
Writers of occult detective fiction work hard to create expert protagonists in these stories. In addition to
those characters already mentioned, there are expert detectives whose specializations include medicine,
law, and Egyptology, as well as characters having expertise in more than one field. Besides Dr. John
Silence and medical student Abercrombie Smith, the medical profession is represented by Dr. Hugh
Pinsent. Malcolm Ross, the narrator of Stoker‘s tale of The Jewel of Seven Stars, represents the legal
profession, and Ralph Lavenham, the narrator of Iras, A Mystery, the field of Egyptology. Those multiply
credentialed include the aforementioned Dr. Pinsent, whose professional interests also include Egyptology
as well as Abel Trelawny‘s assistant, Eugene Corbeck, whose credentials include ―Master of Arts and
Doctor of Laws and Master of Surgery of Cambridge; Doctor of Letters of Oxford; Doctor of Science and
Doctor of Languages at of London University; Doctor of Philosophy of Berlin; Doctor of Orient Languages
of Paris‖ as well as ―some other degrees, honorary and otherwise‖ (n.p.). Though the characters in these
stories are most often represented as scientific professionals in one way or another, when the principal
characters are not themselves scientists, as in the case of Malcolm Ross(an attorney in Jewel) and Cyril
Forrester (a renowned artist in Pharos, the Egyptian), the scientific atmosphere is still catered to as well.
Eugene Corbeck, amateur Egyptologist Abel Trelawny‘s assistant, helps provide the scientific atmosphere
in Bram Stoker‘s The Jewel of Seven Stars, while the scientific atmosphere is provided in Pharos, the
Egyptian by the novel‘s villain, Pharos, who is not only a magician but a man of science who uses that
scientific knowledge as a weapon against his enemies.
48
For a comparison between reading and detection, see Peter Hühn‘s ―The Detective as Reader: Narrativity
and Reading Concepts in Detective Fiction,‖ Modern Fiction Studies 33 (1987): 451-66 and Glenn W.
Most‘s ―The Hippocratic Smile: John le Carré and the Tradition of the Detective Novel,‖ in The Poetics of
Murder: Detective Fiction and Literary Theory (Harcourt, 1983), 299-305.
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laws which govern the physical universe. Bertrand Russell‘s description in The Scientific
Outlook of the process leading to the formation of scientific laws is especially instructive
in this regard. ―In arriving at a scientific law,‖ Russell remarks,
there are three main stages: the first consists in observing significant facts;
the second in arriving at a hypothesis, which, if it is true, would account
for these facts; the third in deducing from this hypothesis consequences
which can be tested by observation. If the consequences are verified, the
hypothesis is provisionally accepted as true, although it will usually
require modification later on as the result of the discovery of further facts.
(40)
Reading works in a remarkably similar way. The first step is observation of ―significant
facts,‖ these facts being the ideas represented by the symbols on the page. With the
observation of these significant facts, readers make judgments about the nature of the text
and on this basis make predictions about what is to come in a way reminiscent of the
formation of scientific hypotheses. The testing portion of the scientific evidence occurs
when readers continue their reading to see if their predictions were correct. If they were,
they are confirmed in their interpretation of the text; if not, they make new predictions
that will account for the direction the text has taken—and the process continues until the
text is completely read.49
49
The theory of reading I am describing here closely follows Kenneth Goodman‘s psycholinguistic model
of reading, which posits that readers make predictions when reading and then read on to either confirm
their predictions or to correct them. This prediction and correction is a part of what Goodman refers to as a
―psycholinguistic guessing game.‖ Goodman‘s model, unlike later models, is largely linear, but it remains
important as it was a basis on which schema theories and interactive models of reading were based. R. C.
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This same three stage process that is at work in scientific investigation and
reading can be seen in the detectives‘ reading of the evidence they have to make their
case.50 Once a crime has been committed, the first thing the detective must do is to
conduct an investigation to find the ―significant facts.‖ Once these facts have been
ascertained, the detective‘s next step is to form a hypothesis which can account for who
committed the crime and how that crime was committed. The last step is the testing of
the hypothesis, which, in the case of detective fiction is ordinarily a testing of the logic of
the argument. There may be several hypotheses tested along the way, new ones being
formed as old hypotheses fail to stand up to accumulating evidence. This procedure
continues until the guilty party is brought to justice, where, for the purposes of the
particular case the story ends. The attempt to solve the case does not continue because
the culprit has been brought to justice and no new hypotheses for the crime will be
created. The only exception would be if the criminal‘s guilt were somehow placed in
doubt, but that would likely be another tale altogether and would be the beginning point
of the story, not a continuation. Nevertheless, there is still one point on which the
scientific community and the detective story agree: the crime which the detective has
solved becomes another case study to be applied to future investigations. Sherlock
Holmes had a remarkable memory for his cases and used them as part of his expert base
Anderson and P. D. Pearson‘s ―A Schema-Theoretic View of Basic Processes in Reading Comprehension‖
provides an excellent overview of the schema model of reading in which readers‘ background knowledge
is organized into ―abstract knowledge structure[s]‖ known as schemata which are used to decode written
information.
50
I am indebted to Glenn W. Most‘s ―The Hippocratic Smile: John le Carré and the Detective Model‖ and
Peter Hühn‘s ―The Detective as Reader: Narrativity and Reading Concepts in Detective Fiction‖ for the
idea of the detective as a reader.
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of knowledge, making it possible for him to make connections that non-experts could not
make. In this way, the detective‘s investigation continues and hypotheses about
motivation, method, and so forth may be continually revised.
The scientific model of reading as I have detailed it here works quite well as a
model establishing the similarities between reading and detection, but what I might call
the ―physician model‖ of reading is probably even more apropos than the scientific
method alone.
Kathryn Montgomery‘s study of ―Sherlock Holmes and Clinical
Reasoning‖ looks at this very question as it examines the manner in which Holmes‘s
investigative techniques parallel those of a doctor. In both cases, according to
Montgomery, the interaction between client and consulting professional begins with ―the
sufferer‘s account of the evil for which he or she seeks help‖ and careful questioning by
the professional consultant, which is then followed by a ―physical examination,‖ where
―signs are investigated [and] tests sometimes performed.‖ Physician and detective,
drawing on their ―wealth of accumulated experience,‖ in the meanwhile develop
hypotheses to explain the symptoms or mysterious occurrences of which the patient/client
complains. Asking the right questions, a skill resulting from accumulated experience and
helped by a taxonomy which helps organize their thinking about the illness or crime, just
makes the possibility of arriving at a correct conclusion that more likely (300).
One other important factor should also be considered in reading—the role of the
detective‘s schemata in forming conclusions about the case. To understand this, we need
to back up for just a moment and consider further just what we mean by reading. At its
most basic level, of course, reading is nothing more than taking written symbols on a
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page and making sense of them. This making sense may be accounted for by various
reading theorists in different ways—as a bottom-up process, by which theorists
understand that reading is the building up of understanding by stringing words together
into meaningful phrases, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and books; as a top-down
process, by which theorists mean a sampling of a text by a reader who then makes
predictions about the direction the text is taking and then making corrections where those
projections are inaccurate; or by some combination of the preceding, so that readers build
up meaning from the bottom and then see the big picture and make projections and
corrections.51
Making projections about what is to come is greatly aided by the reader‘s
background knowledge on the subject which is organized into a scaffolding which can be
called on to fill in blanks and make predictions. Another name for this scaffolding is
―schema.‖ A schema contains information on various sorts of things organized into
interconnected nodes organizing the different pieces of information related to a central
idea. Schemata can be about anything, from how a grocery store or restaurant is
organized to how a particular genre of literature works. The nodes contain pieces of
information that fall under the larger, central organizing idea, such that a schema about
mummy detective fiction would have nodes for the goal of the story (solving a crime or
mystery), the characters (a scientific and/or professional man usually, a mummy, a villain
51
Though numerous researchers, such as Richard C. Anderson, refer to the ―bottom-up‖ theory of reading,
none endorse it. The top-down theory is represented by two schools of thought: one, K .Goodman‘s
―psycholinguistic model‖ and the other, the schema theory model, represented by R. C. Anderson and P. D.
Pearson, P. Carrell and J. C. Eisterhold, and D. E. Rumelhart. The interactive model‘s primary researcher
is W. Grabe. See works cited for specific articles.
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or villains), an investigative procedure in which the occult figures largely, and so forth.
The more complete the schema, the better one is able to use that information to make
sense of a text or, in the case of detectives reading clues, of evidence in a case. The
bottom line is that readers, whether of texts or of clues, have to bring something to the
table. The text cannot do the entire work alone. It is for this reason that experts make
especially good readers—because they have the required information that they can bring
to the text and make sense of it and it is also for this reason that expert detectives make
the best readers of clues in a case. Experts have especially well-developed schemata,
which have been developed in the process of learning new information. As this new
information is learned, it is placed within the appropriate nodes on the schema. When the
expert reader reads information or when the detective reads clues in a case, not only is
information from a particular node is activated, but the connections between the nodes
are set to vibrating, thereby setting off additional relevant information, making it possible
for the reader or detective to have a fuller understanding of the text or clues.
The expert, whether a reader or a detective reading clues, is especially adept at
reading because the nodes within the schema are packed full with useful information that
can be called upon as needed and can help that reader/detective make connections that
would not be readily obvious to the layman. Having such a schema is like reading with an
encyclopedia of relevant information at one‘s fingertips. The expert looks at a text,
draws upon the relevant schema for whatever the situation may be, and is able to retrieve
the necessary information. The schema thus organizes the information and packages in a
way that makes information that much easier to retrieve. It is thus also like a giant filing
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cabinet, and the more expert and experienced the reader/detective, the fuller that filing
cabinet is. It is hardly surprising then that laymen would not be as successful in
deciphering difficult texts or clues since they do not have all this wonderful information
organized for retrieval as do the experts.
Professional training and experience with numerous cases as well as relevant
skills are among the ways that detectives are able to more effectively read the evidence
they encounter when working on a case. Two of the most highly credentialed detectives
within the realm of occultic cases in mummy fiction are the occult detectives Mr.
Flaxman Low and Dr. John Silence. Both of these men have specialized in occult studies
and have gained considerable experience that helps them solve their cases. Low,
according to the introduction of the series of stories in which he appears beginning in
January 1898 in Pearson‘s Monthly Magazine, is depicted as ―one of the leading
scientists of the day‖ who has had a great deal of experience from which the tales in the
series is taken; he is, in addition, well known to ―many‖ of the readers of these stories
and is, moreover, not only knowledgeable but is an innovative thinker who has ―had the
boldness and originality to break free from old and conventional methods and to
approach the elucidation of so-called supernatural problems on the lines of natural law,‖
an approach bound to attract the skeptical mind (Hesketh-Prichard, ―The Story of the
Spaniards‖ n.p.). Silence is likewise an expert in his field and has excellent credentials in
occultic studies. Though he is said to protest when his name is linked with the occult
(S.T. Joshi reckons that such a protest should not be taken too seriously since Silence
claims to have psychic abilities [Joshi viii]), Silence nevertheless has undergone intensive
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training in the occult, described as ―long and severe, [and] at once physical, mental, and
spiritual‖ (Blackwood ―A Psychical Invasion 2). The training, moreover, is so esoteric
that its precise nature and where he had received it is unknown. As it is described, it
holds us in awe of the mystery of the expert, exaggerating with its gaps of information–
gaps commonly experienced as a result of the professional‘s jargon and special
symbols—the very distance between expert and layman.
Low and Silence are also so well versed in the numerous cases with which they
have been involved and are so familiar with relevant theories and other relevant
information that they are able to get to the core of the cases more quickly than others not
so well trained. A couple of examples from each of their cases should make my meaning
here clear. The case that Low deals with in ―The Story of Baelbrow‖ concerns a familiar
ghost that has suddenly become violent after years of non-violent behavior. A maid one
night is killed by some unknown entity when she goes to turn off the lights in a part of
the house that the others have not dared to enter.52 Low is called in by a Professor
Jungvort, who catches Low up on the situation and then proceeds to give testimony of
what he has seen that is seemingly contradicted by his daughter Lena. Low‘s expertise
allows him to take the seemingly contradictory evidence and make sense of the whole.
These bits of testimony provided by the professor and his daughter are instructive and
bear repeating here as they illustrate how Low manages to create a coherent, rational,
52
Eliza Freeman, the maid, is like so many horror movie characters who pay for their foolhardiness with
their lives.
177
though occultic, explanation. The professor‘s testimony of his encounter with the ghost,
a being we later learn to be a mummy-vampire, is recounted as follows:
I was sitting here alone, it might have been midnight—when I hear
something creeping like a little dog with its nails, tick-tick, upon the oak
flooring of the hall. I whistle, for I think it is the little ‗Rags‘ of my
daughter, and afterwards opened the door, and I saw . . . something that
was just disappearing into the passage which connects the two wings of
the house. It was a figure, not unlike the human figure, but narrow and
straight. I fancied I saw a bunch of black hair, and a flutter of something
detached, which may have been a handkerchief. I was overcome by a
feeling of repulsion. I heard a few, clicking steps, then it stopped, as I
thought at the museum door. (par. 6)
Lena‘s account of her encounter with the figure, however, though brief, differs
significantly from her father‘s. Confessing that she has not been able to see her attacker
since he had attacked her from ―‗behind,‘‖ she nonetheless has been able to testify to
having seen her attacker‘s ―‗dark bony hand, with shining nails and . . . bandaged arm . .
. [and having ] smelt the antiseptics it [the bandage] was dressed with‘‖ (n.p.) . Her
father, on her leaving, notes the discrepancy, and exclaims to Low, ―‗She says she sees
nothing but an arm, yet I tell you it had no arms! Preposterous! Conceive a wounded
man entering this house to frighten the young women! I do not know what to make of it!
Is it a man, or is it the Baelbrow Ghost?‘‖ (n.p.)
178
The problem for Low, of course, is the apparently contradictory nature of the
testimony these two witnesses offer. Low‘s expertise and his acquaintance with
numerous cases, however, make it possible for him to piece together the truth of what
they both saw by drawing on his knowledge of ancient Egyptian mummification
techniques. Thus it is that Low can see that the fluttering of what the professor supposes
to be a handkerchief and Lena bandages is actually the movement of the mummy‘s
bandages; and the clicking of the dog‘s toenails the professor hears and the shining nails
Lena sees and the scents she smells when attacked all prove to be the result of ancient
Egyptian mummification techniques. The idea of investigation here seems to be the same
as that expressed by Holmes to Watson in The Sign of Four, where he remarks ―that
when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must
be the truth‖ (emphasis original, 111). The idea of a mummy wandering about and
attacking people is, of course, a frightening one, as it was intended to be, but the presence
of an expert is nonetheless reassuring. Science, which as a character in another of these
stories remarks, ―scouts‖ the idea of the paranormal or the supernatural, here seems to
support it: science, as its Latin root scientia indicates, is all about knowledge, and is, in its
broadest sense simply the ―state or fact of knowing,‖ and would thus not be amiss in
taking in all forms of knowledge, whether that information were to come as the result of
typical late-Victorian scientific experimentation or from apparently otherworldly origins
(Pratt 161; OED). In acting in this manner, Low, as other occult investigators both in
fiction and the world outside its pages, tears down the wall separating the two sorts of
knowledge (i.e., the scientific and the occult) and demonstrates how, to his way of
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thinking, the two are all part of one vast sea of information available to the researcher
willing to seek it out.
Low‘s knowledge of theory is the final linchpin that makes the solution of the
case possible. Drawing on occult theory as well as on numerous cases studies, Low, in a
manner reminiscent of earlier occult detectives such as. Hesselius and Van Helsing,
presents a rational, scientific discussion of the occult. Science is well-represented here as
Low uses scientific language, as he speaks of ―‗psychic seeds or germs‘‖ and quotes
―authorities‖ (n.p.). His knowledge based on these authorities tells him, as it would the
scientist or the physician, the ―conditions‖ under which ―a vampire may be self-created‖
and what their significance is, so that he knows how the haunted house‘s location plays a
role on the events which follow and how unwrapping the mummy has affected the entity
which takes over the body of the mummy (n.p.). His stance, too, might be described as
scientific as he stands back from the events that have occurred, bringing not emotion but
reason to bear in solving the crime. Again, it is Low‘s use of language that reveals this
attitude, as he lectures Harold Swaffam, his partner in uncovering the truth in this
episode. The aforementioned references to ―authorities‖ and ―psychic seeds or germs,‖
for example, are part of a more formal linguistic register which effectively place distance
between himself and the events which he is describing. Similarly, his phrasing of his
finding that a vampire spirit has inhabited the body of the newly unwrapped mummy
creates distance through its formality as well, when he notes that in this case ―we have
every indication of a vampire intelligence touching into life and energy the dead human
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frame [of the mummy]‖ (n.p.). In using language in this way, Low establishes himself as
an expert in his field while creating the distance expected of the professional.
Silence‘s familiarity with numerous cases and relevant theories also makes his
ability to read evidence much more powerful than those who are not in possession of
such knowledge. The scene where Silence, Hubbard (Watson to Silence‘s Holmes [Joshi
vii]) and Colonel Wragge (the client) gather together in the laundry to cause the fire
elementals that have been tormenting the Colonel and those around him to make
themselves known is especially revealing with regard to Silence‘s impressive knowledge
of cases and theory. First, the theory: in this particular episode of the story, Silence
reveals precisely the steps required to raise and reveal the intelligence behind the fire
elementals that have been causing so much trouble. The introduction to the process is
begun in a quick exchange of question and answer between the Colonel and Silence:
―And how do you propose to make it visible [the Colonel asks]?
How capture and confine it?
―By furnishing it with the materials for a form. By the process of
materialisation simply. Once limited by dimensions, it will become slow,
heavy, visible. We can then dissipate it. (118)
Asked what these materials are, Silence answers, ―‗the exhalation of freshly spilled
blood‘‖ (118).
A few moments later, Silence lapses into one of his favorite poses—that of
lecturing expert, where he further reveals the scope of his knowledge as well as his selfconsciousness of himself as an expert and the importance of his duty to his client.
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Telling the Colonel that ―‗[t]here are other and pleasanter methods‘‖ of causing the
―intelligence‖ behind the fire elemental to appear, he immediately establishes his reason
for his decision by asserting his professional judgment, when he tells the Colonel that
―things have gone much too far, in my opinion, to admit of delay‘‖ (118). In this
expression, he not only reveals his image of himself as an expert, but also recalls his
professional standing as a physician as he makes clear his recommendation to his
patient/client. His self-consciousness as a professional is also revealed as he moves from
technical jargon in his expression of the case to language more appropriate for a layman,
as he does when he refers first to ―‗discarnate life‘‖ and then changes that to ―‗spirits‘‖
(118). His professional standing is further enhanced as he explains other theoretical
matters to the Colonel, noting, for example, that the ―‗emanations of blood‘‖ are,
according to ―‗Levi,‘‖ ―‗the first incarnation of the universal fluid‘‖ and following up that
statement with the fact that ―blood sacrifice‖ had been ―known to the priests of Baal‖ as
well as to ―modern ecstasy dancers who cut themselves to produce objective phantoms
who dance with them‖ (118) . His knowledge also reveals his connection to an area that
would commonly be of no interest to the scientific mind, except as a curiosity, namely, to
those practices of ―primitive‖ people. Such knowledge would have been especially
interesting to a people such as the fin de siècle Briton with their concern about a
degenerating race and the feared possibility of a descent into savagery. Certainly,
numerous works of the late-Victorian period, such as Robert Louis Stevenson‘s Strange
Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, make clear that such a descent, as Patrick Brantlinger
has argued, was of concern (229). Nor had an interest in the subject died out even by the
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Great War‘s conclusion, as Sigmund Freud‘s essay on ―The Uncanny‖ makes clear.
According to Freud, in fact, the modern world was still greatly consumed by the idea of
death, thus linking us with our primitive ancestors. Modern cities of his day, he tells us,
were full of ―[p]lacards advertis[ing] lectures that are meant to instruct us‖ on how to
make contact with the dead. The fact is, Freud argues, that ―in hardly any other sphere
has our thinking and feeling changed so little since primitive times or the old been so well
preserved under a thin veneer, as in our relation to death‖ (148). Yet, as histories of
occult research such as Oppenheim‘s The Other World and Doyle‘s The History of
Spiritualism reveal, the placards of which Freud speaks were designed for modern
audiences who did not see themselves as primitive but as rational, up-to-date individuals,
thus repressing their ―primitive‖ side—leaving them open to the terrifying return of the
repressed primitive in the form of the mummy like Doyle himself, who took, as indicated
in an interview filmed in the last year of his life, great pains to ensure that those
phenomena he experienced were real (Arthur Conan Doyle Interviewed). Dr. Silence
fills the same sort of need. A modern man, well educated, Dr. Silence combines the
opposing forces of ―primitive‖ interest in the supernatural with scientific rigor. His
knowledge of the practices of ancient and/or ―primitive‖ peoples, given his interests, is
thus only natural.
A bit later in the same scene, Silence, in an exchange where the Colonel reveals
his unexpected knowledge in matters of the occult, demonstrates his (Silence‘s) wide
grasp of cases, where again, ―primitive‖ or ―savage‖ tribes are featured:
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―It is curious,‖ said the Colonel, with a sudden rush of words,
drawing a deep breath, and as though speaking of things distasteful to him,
―that during my years among the Hill Tribes of Northern India I came
across—personally came across—instances of sacrifices of blood to
certain deities being stopped suddenly, and all manner of disasters
happened until they were resumed. Fires broke out in the huts, and even
on the clothes, of the natives—and—and I admit I have read, in the course
of my studies . . . of the Yezidis of Syria evoking phantoms by means of
cutting their bodies with knives during their whirling dances. . . . (119)
The non-occult or skeptical professional at this point would likely be tempted to poohpooh the idea that Colonel Wragge is expressing here (one could not imagine Sherlock
Holmes, for instance, giving credence to such ―nonsense‖), but Silence, as we have seen,
is no ordinary expert. His reading and his own familiarity with such matters have made
clear to him that such things do occur, and he is hardly one to express disbelief when
another speaks of his own experience in these matters. The primitive and the savage, this
tale, like many other gothic stories, seems to argue, are more in touch with occult forces.
Scientific materialism, which does not accept otherworldly evidence, on the other hand,
is not, and for this reason cannot be relied upon to provide such evidence. Only that
science which accepts the supernatural world as part of he universe can be of any help.
Once one accepts that both those matters which are considered supernatural and those
simply natural are all of one cloth, investigation into such cases becomes mandatory.
And Silence, once again, shows that he is no slouch in this regard either, for, when the
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Colonel continues his reminiscences from his reading, Silence shows himself yet the
Colonel‘s superior even in knowledge of this sort as he (Silence) takes this information in
stride, responding with another question of the Colonel: ―Then perhaps you have read,
too,‖ said the doctor, ―how the Cosmic Deities of savage races, elemental in their nature,
have been kept alive through many ages by these blood rites?‖ to which the Colonel can
only reply, ―No . . . that is new to me‖ (119).
It is this kind of wide-ranging knowledge that is at work any time either Silence
or Low read the evidence they collect as they go about their investigations. They have all
of this information that they have amassed to draw upon, to make comparisons to other
cases with which they are familiar. Low, for example, can look at the marks upon Lena‘s
neck and know that a vampire has bitten her and can take the information that the house
at Baelbrow is built on a barrow and come to the conclusion that a vampiric spirit has
taken over the body of the mummy Swaffam Senior has sent home and thereby account
for the Baelbrow ghost having turned violent. Similarly, Silence can determine that the
globes of fire that have been tormenting those around Colonel Wragge‘s estate are
actually fire elementals that have been let loose on the family because the Colonel‘s
brother had previously disturbed the resting place of an ancient mummy when he brought
it home to England. Low and Silence have seen similar cases and they are aware of the
occultic laws at work and are able to determine the causes behind the troubling events.
Their situation is similar to the expert detective which Holmes describes to Watson in A
Study in Scarlet, where the detective is able to solve cases because of his familiarity with
so many different examples: ―‗There is a strong family resemblance about misdeeds,‘‖
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he says, ―‗and if you have all the details of a thousand at your finger ends, it is odd if you
can‘t unravel the thousand and first‘‖ (24).
The nature of the knowledge that both occult detectives and other investigators in
these stories follow is, of course, of a different sort than that which is typically
considered by the scientific community. It includes not only information that might be
deemed scientific, but otherworldly knowledge as well; relying on that otherworldly sort
of information, of course, is what gives the mummy tales their special flavor.
Underneath all of these considerations is a more serious consideration, namely, what, in
Foucault‘s words, ―counts as true‖ (Power/Knowledge 131). Foucault tells us that
―[e]ach society has its regime of truth, its ‗general politics‘ of truth. . . [that spells out]
which [truths] it accepts and makes functions as true‖ (131). Those power structures
within the society that make these judgments are necessarily very influential. Other
forces, of course, may be at work in the society, contesting the official values; when this
happens, there is a struggle for dominance. In the mummy stories we have been
discussing, the dominant power is the scientific community, and it was so powerful that it
led many thinkers of the period into abandoning the faith of their childhood or in
prompting scholarly ecclesiastics, such as Bishop J. W. Colenso, to endeavor to
reinterpret the foundations of their faith in a more scientific manner (Oppenheim passim;
Landow n.p.). The oppositional force, of course, is that of the occultic community.
Because of the hegemonic power of the scientific community, then, many tales of the
supernatural, including the mummy tales we are looking at, attempted to give their
supernatural tales a more scientific feel by the inclusion of experts of one sort or another.
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These two groups, naturally enough, would conflict in matters that have to do with
establishing the truth of various sorts of occurrences that the tales we have been
examining portray. As a result of these differences, the kinds of things that one group
might consider fair game in establishing truth will vary from those kinds of things that
the other group would accept. Thus it is that in those stories in which the occult is
accepted, numerous sorts of evidence and methodologies that might not be accepted in
scientific circles are, in fact, accepted and lauded in the mummy tales. Those detectives
using these unusual sorts of methods or technology, of course, do not abandon their
reason in the process, but include it in as they examine the additional evidence that their
worldview permits them to accept. By approaching answers in this way, a whole other
world of data becomes available to them, data which suggests that there is more to life
than the material, that life goes on beyond the grave, and that, with the right kind of help,
that of the expert variety, the unknown can be known and its frightening aspects be tamed
and controlled.
At its most fundamental level, the differences in what counts as credible
testimony and what does not is a matter of whether the thing under investigation is part of
the natural world that all of us experience or not. If it is not and if it cannot be
reproduced and measured in the laboratory, then the scientific community tends to
dismiss it, whether derisively or with a simple shrug of the shoulder, admitting nothing
more than the impossibility of knowing the truth .53 The convinced occultist, of course,
53
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in his study of The History of Spiritualism , complained repeatedly of this sort
of problem, where skeptical researcher would come to a séance with disruptive attitudes and equipment and
then be smugly satisfied when the séance proved a failure.
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sees things differently. For such individuals, the truth of occult phenomena, despite the
many cases of fraud which had been discovered, was nonetheless a reality. (Doyle‘s
History of Spiritualism is full of such cases, though it never seems to be sufficient cause
for his abandoning his belief.) For such individuals, evidence of a nature that
undoubtedly would be deemed deficient by those in scientific circles was perfectly
legitimate. Cases investigating telepathy, ghosts, and the like were commonly looked
into by members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). In mummy literature,
equally unusual evidence was not only investigated but taken as legitimate sources of
information in making inquiries into occultic phenomena. This evidence, quite often,
required unusual methods of collection as well. Two methods of gathering intelligence in
mummy detective fiction are starkly at odds with the scientific community‘s
understanding of proper methods in establishing factual data: psychometric reading of
evidence and thought-reading, both tools used by Dr. Silence in his investigation of
Colonel Wragge‘s case in the tale of ―The Nemesis of Fire.‖
Oddly enough, despite the unusual conjunction of science and the occult, Dr.
Silence does not consider himself anything other than a man of science, though one who
has, through his studies and the development of his psychic skills, been given access to a
broader ―natural‖ world than that open to the traditional scientist: the natural world, as S.
T. Joshi remarks in his introduction to The Complete John Silence Stories, is simply
bigger than we ordinarily imagine, ―encompass[ing],‖ as it does, ―both spiritual and
psychic phenomena‖ (vii). Thus, when Silence tells Colonel Wragge that he (Silence)
has ―‗yet to come across a problem that is not natural, and has not a natural explanation,‘‖
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he is simply including the supernatural as part of the natural world (102). In this, he
would be in perfect accord with the theory of knowledge held by the villain Phadrig in
The Mummy and Miss Nitocris, namely, that, as Phadrig tells Prince Oscarovitch at one
point, ―‗There are no miracles, Highness: only the results of higher knowledge than that
which they who see them possess‘‖ (n.p.). By claiming the supernatural as part of the
natural world, then, both Phadrig and Silence make possible a claim for scientific
rationality in an occult world.
The techniques used by Silence for investigation—psychometric reading and
thought-reading—are, however, clearly on the side of the paranormal or preternatural and
serve to make possible a resolution to an otherworldly problem that cannot otherwise be
accomplished and demonstrates how scientific knowledge alone as it was currently
constructed was insufficient to answer all of the questions an individual might have. We
encounter the first of these two procedures, psychometric reading, early in the story,
when Silence psychometrically reads the letter from Colonel Wragge requesting an
appointment simply by touching it and psychically understanding all that went into its
construction. Because of his training, and one cannot help but imagine also his special
sensitivity to such matters, Silence is able to read more from the letter than the average
person. He does this through psychometry. Although the definition of psychometry can
include ―[t]he measurement of mental capacities, states, and processes,‖ according to the
Oxford English Dictionary, its meaning with regard to Silence‘s abilities have to do with
the occult, where psychometry is held to be the ability of ―obtaining information about an
object‘s history, or about people or events with which it has been associated, purely by
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touching it or through close proximity to it‖54 (Oxford English Dictionary). Just as
Stephen King‘s Johnny Smith is able to touch, say, a mailbox and know what has
happened recently in connection with a person who has touched that mailbox, so Silence
is able to touch the letter that Colonel Wragge has sent him and gather information from
it that the Colonel never communicates. Hubbard, Silence‘s ―Dr. Watson-like assistant‖
and narrator of the tale, tells us what the observant, but not spiritually gifted person might
gather from the letter, noting what would be accessible to the non-expert—the words on
the page, their vocabulary, brevity, penmanship—and tells us what can be gathered from
ordinary rational procedures without the aid of the occultic tools (Joshi vii). In so doing,
Hubbard reveals both the strengths and the limits of rationality when diligently applied as
well as the usefulness of occultic knowledge when important information is hidden. It
argues for the need of a broader methodology in the search for truth.
The object of this examination, the letter, as Hubbard describes it, ―was very
brief, direct, and to the point . . . [and] was dignified even to the point of abruptness‖ and
gave ―the impression of a strong man, shaken and perplexed‖ (85). Hubbard, unsure
how such an idea would be communicated to him, considers several possibilities:
Perhaps the restraint of wording, and the mystery of the affair had
something to do with it; and the reference to the Anderson case, the horror
of which lay still vivid in my memory, may have touched the sense of
54
The OED‘s definition, however, would not be complete without its hedging terminology which begins
the definition with the words ―the supposed practice,‖ a phrasing necessitated by a publication not in the
business of taking sides in such matters. For Silence, however, and the world in which he operates, there is
no such doubt, and the information he gathers in this manner is taken as absolutely scientifically legitimate.
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something rather ominous and alarming. But, whatever the cause, there
was no doubt that an impression of serious peril rose somehow out of that
white paper with the few lines of firm writing, and the spirit of a deep
uneasiness ran between the words and reached the mind without any
visible form of expression. (85)
Hubbard‘s attempt at an explanation, however, as is evident here, only takes him so far,
and it is only Dr. Silence with his psychometric ability and vast reserves of specialized
knowledge that can fully explain what Hubbard only senses. Hubbard is a sort of
everyman, standing in for those of us who do not possess the skills and sensitivities of a
Dr. Silence. Although he has some ability—he can, after all, see the shapes and feel the
heat that Silence tells him are a result of the heat elementals when he (Hubbard) attempts
a psychometric reading—he must rely on his ability to use logic to compensate for what
psychometric reading does not reveal to him. For any other enlightenment, he must rely
on an expert, on Dr. Silence. Hubbard‘s examination of the letter and his attempt to
account rationally for what he senses is nevertheless important as it provides a rational
foundation for what will become an occultic investigation. The path that Hubbard‘s
explanation follows, in fact, traces the intellectual movement from the attempts of the
non-expert as he or she attempts first to make sense of the evidence through non-occultic
thinking (looking for the explanation in one‘s own emotional response or in the
information that the letter writer has communicated through his brevity and wording) to
finding oneself at a loss for the sense that some danger lurks behind the words
communicated in the letter.
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The non-occultic explanation, however, is insufficient to provide the explanation
for the impression that the letter has on Hubbard. Instead, it is left to Dr. Silence to fully
interpret the letter, both answering the questions that Hubbard has raised in his
investigation and at the same time more fully developing and interpreting their first clue
in the Colonel‘s case—even before he has seen Colonel Wragge for the first time—thus
increasing the sense of wonder at the detective‘s abilities. The interpretation (i.e., the
reading) is accomplished through a combination of a specially trained sensitivity that
allows Silence to see the psychometric evidence combined with an educated ability to
understand what he has seen. This ability to interpret evidence becomes especially
obvious when contrasted with side-kick Hubbard‘s confusion over what he sees when
Silence asks him to do a psychometric reading of the letter.
While there is undoubtedly a degree of difference in what Hubbard and Silence
are able to see when they each take their psychometric reading of the letter, it is chiefly
Silence‘s ability to understand what he sees when he does so that makes him the superior
detective: he has expert knowledge that allows him to make sense of those things he sees
when he investigates a case. When Hubbard, under Silence‘s direction (another indication
of the latter‘s superior status and expertise), places the letter against his forehead and
attempts to read the letter psychometrically, he sees ―nothing but the lines of light that
pass to and fro like the changes of a kaleidoscope across the blackness‖ of his closed
eyes—that, and a sensation of heat (86). These flashes of light, he tells Silence, ―group
themselves now and then . . . into globes and round balls of fire, and the lines that flash
about sometimes look like triangles and crosses—almost geometrical figures‖ (86).
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Hubbard thinks he has failed in his experiment, but Silence knows that what Hubbard has
seen is significant—especially the sensation of heat that Hubbard has described.
Although he does not immediately reveal the significance of Hubbard‘s vision, as the
story progresses Silence ultimately reveals that what Hubbard has seen is the result of
―heat elementals‖ that have been appearing because of the desecrated tomb of an ancient
Egyptian magician who has set these elementals to guard his tomb. They are the cause of
the oppressive heat and the strange bits of fire that have erupted at the country estate of
Colonel Wragge. It is because of his knowledge of the occult, that field in which he is
expert, that he is able to bring his experience to bear on the clues with which he has been
presented. This ability, combined with an expertise sufficient to know what both he and
Hubbard have seen in the letter—the fire elementals—gives Silence a great advantage as
a detective because it makes evidence available to him that would otherwise be missing.
It also demonstrates in the process a cultural reluctance to let go the mystery of the past,
while at the same time clinging to pseudo-scientific methodology in Dr. Silence‘s use of
a specialized tool to unlock mysteries in the case that no ordinary detective could do.
The episode seems to suggest that both science and a belief in an otherworldly existence
can work hand-in-hand, raising what might easily be seen as mere superstition to the
level of science by placing the procedure in the hand of a well-trained expert. In an age
in which many had given up on a worldview encompassing the supernatural and,
replacing it with a confidence in scientific research and professional expertise, Silence‘s
psychometric reading manages to provide readers with something to satisfy both their
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urge for scientific certainty with a desire to believe in mysteries beyond our ordinary
experience.
Silence also has access to information denied the ordinary scientific investigator
in yet another way: in his ability to read thoughts, an ability which first comes to light in
an interview with Colonel Wragge, on the evening of Silence‘s and Hubbard‘s arrival at
the Colonel‘s home. This technique is, of course, another of the sort of research tools
that flies directly in the face of what would be considered an acceptable means of
gathering information by the traditional scientific community, but it is one that proves
quite useful as the story unfolds as it provides opportunities for direct access to
information, making possible solutions to problems that traditional scientific methods
cannot provide. We see this early in the tale when Silence reads Colonel Wragge‘s
thoughts. It happens this way: when the Colonel tells Silence and Hubbard that recently
the trouble with the oppressive heat and its visual manifestations in the Twelve Acre
Plantation, which had ceased for a time, has suddenly come back again and is so serious
that he is considering ―leaving,‖ Silence responds, ―half under his breath, but not so low
that Colonel Wragge did not hear him,‖ with one word—―‗Incendiarism?‘‖ (98). This
question so shocks the Colonel that he says, ―‗By Jove, sir, you take the very words out
of my mouth!‘‖ to which Silence responds, ―‗It‘s merely a little elementary thoughtreading‘‖ (99). This ―thought reading‖ to which Silence alludes he explains to the
Colonel as the reception of various visual images coming from the latter‘s mind which
Silence can read because the Colonel, according to Silence, is ―‗thinking very vividly‘‖
(99). They are images, not written or spoken words, and they are apparently immediately
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comprehensible as having been transmitted directly from one mind to the other.
Interpretation is surely part of the process—after all, one must determine what these
images mean—but they are a more direct means of passing information from one person
to the other; and given that Silence in this way has direct access to the mind, it would
seem to be especially useful in ascertaining precisely what Colonel Wragge is thinking,
which is important
because it grants Silence greater access to information than he would otherwise have,
allowing him to solve the case more readily; but it does something else, too: it provides a
means of mystification, connecting both client and reader to that primitive or savage part
of ourselves of which both Freud and Andrew Lang speak, reintroducing an element of
wonder that science alone cannot provide (Freud, ―The Uncanny‖ 149; Pearson 228).
Scientific examination can, however, reveal information that is available by
physically verifiable data: evidence from the crime scene, from documentary sources
such as newspapers, letters, telegrams, and tablets, and from bodies, whether those of
witnesses, victims, or mummies. Doyle‘s story of ―Lot No. 249‖ and Stoker‘s tale of The
Jewel of Seven Stars both make good use of various sorts of physical evidence. Doyle‘s
story, with medical student Abercrombie Smith as its protagonist, makes excellent use of
physically available evidence, a prime example being the events that transpire when
Smith is called on to attend a fainting Edward Bellingham, who has apparently had some
kind of scare. Smith‘s carefully trained eye takes in both the evidence available in the
room where Bellingham has fallen as well as Bellingham‘s body itself. The room that
Smith first surveys is full of information for the careful observer:
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It was such a chamber as he [Smith] had never seen before—a museum
rather than a study. Walls and ceiling were thickly covered with a
thousand strange relics from Egypt and the East. Tall angular figures
bearing burdens or weapons stalked in an uncouth frieze round the
apartment. Above were bull-head, stork-headed, cat-headed statues, with
viper-crowned, almond-eyed monarchs, and strange beetlelike deities cut
out of the blue Egyptian lapis lazuli. Horus and Isis and Osiris peeped
down from every niche and shelf, while across the ceiling a true son of
Old Nile, a great hanging jawed crocodile, was hung in a double noose.
(530)
In the midst of this room, however, is the most crucial piece of evidence—the mummy.
Placed on ―a large square table, littered with papers, bottles, and the dried leaves of some
graceful palm-like plant‖ in the middle of the room, the mummy, ―a horrid, black,
withered thing, like a charred head on a gnarled bush,‖ the mummy is threateningly
displayed ―lying half out of the case, with its clawlike hand and bony forearm resting
upon the table‖ (530). Rational judgment, of course, can only take this description so far:
obviously, the occupant of the room, it can be reasoned, is someone interested in ancient
Egypt and environs. This interest would undoubtedly include a fascination with ancient
mythology. The presence of the mummy, at this point, could only be reckoned a part of
that interest and the fact of the mummy being part way out of the case could not by any
traditional scientific or rational thinking be construed as the result of an aborted
resurrection, though, undoubtedly, readers of such stories could make such assumptions
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as a result of their familiarity with the genre. The fact that something had occurred to
cause Bellingham a scare, however, can be scientifically established: both the patient‘s
pulse (which was ―‗going like a pair of castanets‘‖) and his coloring (―an absolutely
bloodless white, like the underside of a sole‖) testify to something that has gone terribly
wrong (530). A change in the patient‘s weight can also be established, for the patient,
though ―very fat . . . gave the impression of having been considerably fatter, for his skin
hung loosely increases and folds, and was shot with a meshwork of wrinkles‖ (530).
Additional details about the patient‘s [s] hort stubbly brown hair and ―thick wrinkled
protruding ears‖ are presented more for the purpose of completing the picture of
Bellingham‘s appearance, but the ―light gray eyes [that] were still open, the pupils
dilated, and the balls projecting in a fixed and horrid stare,‖ provide real medical
information (530).
Scientific evidence, however, cannot provide the ultimate solution to the puzzle
that Smith faces since the solution involves an occurrence that is not deemed possible by
natural law. This means that Smith has to move from scientific evidence based on a
material worldview and connect what he knows with a solution clearly not accepted by
traditional scientific thinking. Thus it is that he moves from a selection of discrete pieces
of evidence consonant with the natural world to an inference acceptable only in the world
of the occult: this means he takes evidence such as the physical symptoms that
Bellingham has exhibited, the sound of steps that he has heard ―upon the stairs‖ which
he judges were ―not the step of an animal,‖ incidences of attacks on two others and one
upon himself, the second of which coincides with a time in which the mummy was
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missing from its case, the fact of a witness account noting how easily his attacker threw
him into the river, and reaches the conclusion that all of this adds up to a resurrected
mummy attacking victims under the direction of Bellingham.
The facts in this case, of course, are those things upon which both the scientific
and occultic worldviews can agree; the interpretation is another matter altogether—and it
is the difference of interpretation that is at the heart of much of the disagreement about
whether events should receive a supernatural or scientific explanation. We can see this
most clearly in Smith‘s conversation with the Reverend Plumptree Peterson. Smith
comes to see his friend Peterson shortly after he has reached his conclusion about the
mummy and immediately after having been chased by that same mummy when on his
way to pay his visit to Peterson. On hearing all that Smith has to say, Peterson responds:
―My dear boy, you take the matter too seriously. . . . Your nerves
are out of order with your work, and you make too much of it. How could
such a thing as this stride about the streets of Oxford, even at night,
without being seen?‖
―It has been seen [Smith replies]. There is quite a scare in town
about an escaped ape, as they image the creature to be. It is the talk of the
place.
―Well, it‘s a striking chain of events. And yet, my dear fellow, you
must allow that each incident in itself is capable of a more natural
explanation.‖
What! even my adventure of tonight?‖
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―Certainly. You come out with your nerves all unstrung, and your
head full of this theory of yours. Some gaunt, half-famished tramp steals
after you, and seeing you run, is emboldened to pursue you. Your fears
and imagination do the rest.‖
―It won‘t do Peterson; it won‘t do.‖
―And again in the instance of your finding the mummy case empty,
and then a few moments later with an occupant, you know that it was
lamp-light, that the lamp was half-turned down, and that you had no
special reason to look hard at the case. It is quite possible that you may
have overlooked the creature in the first instance.‖
―No, no; it is out of the question.‖
―And then Lee may have fallen into the river, and Norton been
garroted. It is certainly a formidable indictment that you have against
Bellingham; but if you were to place it before a police magistrate, he
would simply laugh in your face.‖ (542)
I have quoted this exchange at length because I believe it represents the core of
the disagreement between the scientific/rational mind with its emphasis on material
explanations and the occult worldview. Smith, whom one could suppose to be firmly
within the scientific camp before his experience, has come to believe in the supernatural
explanation. Ironically, it is Peterson, a man of God and one whom we could easily
suppose to be a believer in the supernatural (though, clearly, not in mere superstition),
who offers the rational explanation: nerves, overwork, illusion, and so forth. The two
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men are looking at the same set of circumstances, but they arrive at diametrically
opposed interpretations. Peterson does not dispute that Smith has seen those things
which he has claimed to have seen, but he does question both his perception of events (as,
for example, when he sees first an empty ―mummy case‖ and then finds it occupied) and
his interpretation. All of these events might have another explanation; it is Smith‘s
disturbed nerves that can account for his misperceptions and subsequent faulty
interpretations.
The story, however, sides not with Peterson but with Smith and implicitly argues
for an understanding of the world that includes a place for the supernatural, where
mummies, raised by little known occult processes can live again and where men or
women, with the right knowledge, can follow occultic rules located in ancient documents
and cause the dead to live again. It is a kind of mirror image of the scientific world, in a
sense, one that has its own rules and its own ideas of acceptable evidence. However one
comes to it, it involves an ultimate commitment to a set of values, a faith, if you will, that
the world works in a way consonant with the occultic worldview. The same, I would
argue, could be said of science. How Smith makes his leap to the conclusion that it is a
mummy that is at work in this tale is not entirely clear. All that the narrator tells us is
that ―[w]hat had been a dim suspicion, a vague fantastic conjecture, had suddenly taken
form, and stood out in his [Smith‘s] mind as a grim fact, a thing not to be denied‖ (538).
It is, in essence, a conversion, a conviction that what had been haunting the back of his
mind had, in fact, real validity. And ever afterward, Smith is a changed man, operating
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under the assumptions of his new belief and accomplishing, as an independent, unofficial
individual, the justice that science and the occult could not provide.
Smith is able to bring order about when he seeks out Bellingham and has him
destroy both his mummy and his occult documents that make possible the raising of the
dead because he, with his acceptance of an occultic worldview accepts what science
cannot. Because he accepts these ideas, he can act upon them. Science, which does not
accept them, can never do this because it does not admit their validity. As a result,
science cannot understand and cannot control the occult forces which threaten society.
To combat something, one must first admit its existence. Failure to admit even the
possibility of an occult world means that a whole other existence is not taken into account
and access to information that is available through such sources is not available. The
result is incomplete or inaccurate information such as we see when local newspapers try
to account for the death of Isaac Josephus, whom the police have recruited to spy on
Phadrig in The Mummy and Miss Nitocris. The newspaper reports his death as a suicide,
but what they do not realize is that Josephus, though he pulled the trigger that resulted in
his death, was not a self-murderer but a man who had been commanded, through
hypnotic suggestion, to kill himself. The paper has no way of knowing that the command
was given by Phadrig, using a glowing jewel with special powers called the ―Horus
Stone,‖ to effect this death. Only someone with the ability to see behind the scenes could
do so. The newspaper in the same novel is similarly unable to report the full story of the
Zastrow kidnapping. It takes someone with special powers, Professor Marmion, in this
case, to see beyond what the papers report and what the police are able to find out to get
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the truth. Newspapers and police officials are equally unable to reveal the truth about the
murder of the curiosity shop proprietor in Pharos, the Egyptian because Pharos has been
able to hypnotically manipulate those around him to do his bidding and even convince
one man to confess to the murder that Pharos has committed and then kill himself
afterwards before the police can question him further. Pharos, in this way, effectively
―rewrites‖ the crime in such a way (i.e., endeavors to plant clues that point to others and
so forth) as to make finding the truth almost impossible (Hühn 454). Acceptance of the
supernatural is the only way that the truth of events in the story can be known.
Though there are tales of the fantastic in mummy detective fiction where the
validity of the supernatural is in doubt, for the most part, the stories we have looked at
make the implicit argument that science does not have all the answers and a knowledge
of another sort, an occult knowledge, is necessary if we are to understand the world in
which we live fully and control supernatural forces that are beyond the ability of
traditional scientists, physicians, and police to understand and/or manage. The stories, as
we have seen abound with examples: police cannot manage the events that occur in any
of the stories. Smith must bring the criminal Bellingham to justice in ―Lot No. 249‖
because law enforcement officers would merely laugh at him if he brought his story to
them. Nor can ordinary detective may resolve the issues faced by the inhabitants of the
house at Baelbrow or at Colonel Wragge‘s estate. Materialist science is simply incapable
of resolving these issues.
The bottom line, these stories tell us, is that science cannot answer all of our
questions. Some things simply are not amenable to scientific explanation. Even in those
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tales of the fantastic, such as Pratt‘s tale of The Living Mummy and Everett‘s Iras, a
Mystery, science cannot provide a final solution. We are instead left in a state of
ignorance as questions remain that defy scientific explanation. While science maintains
that dead bodies cannot be resurrected and that ghosts do not exist, occult tales insist they
can and they do. Tales of this latter sort see the world of the supernatural as real and
their stories argue implicitly that only those who accept such things can be of any real
value in coming to terms with the problems emanating from that world. Science must, if
it is to be of any real value, these stories say, take the world of spirit into account, for
only by so doing can some of the deepest concerns of humanity be answered.
The Mummy Narrative and the Silent Film
All of the mummy stories that we have been looking at in this study have been up
to this point narratives that appeared in print, whether short stories that were printed in
magazines or collected in books or serialized novels that first saw publication in
magazine form before they were published as books.55 These stories were often
accompanied by illustrations, as was the custom of the time, but they were tales that were
told primarily through verbal, rather than visual, means. With the advent of silent film in
the last decade of the nineteenth century, however, mummy narratives entered a new
arena, where visual means of storytelling entered the picture. These stories came from
all over the world and ranged in genre from the early trick films where special effects
provide the primary interest in the film (such as we see in Robert W. Paul‘s 1901 tale of
The Haunted Curiosity Shop) to comedies (e.g., Wanted—A Mummy [1910]) to stories
of romance (When Soul Meets Soul [1912]) and horror (e.g., The Vengeance of Egypt
[1912]). . The stories were not what Hollywood would later make of them, with the
55
Two examples help to explain: ―The Story of Baelbrow,‖ by mother and son team, H. V. and Katherine
Hesketh-Prichard, was originally published in Pearson‘s Monthly Magazine in a series they called ―Real
Ghost Stories..― The first of these stories, ―The Story of the Spaniards, Hammersmith,‖ was published in
January 1898. ―Baelbrow,‖ followed in April of that year (Gaslight‘s Katherine and Hesketh Prichard Page
n.p.). This short story was later published in book form as part of a collection of Flaxman Low stories,
originally in a collection published in 1899 by C.A. Pearson in London under the title Ghosts: Being the
Experiences of Flaxman Low . . . With Twelve Illustrations by B. E. Minns. Guy Boothby‘s novel,
Pharos, the Egyptian, first saw publication as a serial in Windsor Magazine, appearing in that publication
between June and December 1898. It, too, was later published as a book.
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exception of those horror tales that were beginning to develop, but were focused
primarily on tales of love, such as had been offered by many of the print narratives, or on
visual comedy. They were stories of a new type, making the most of the opportunities
provided by a new medium, looking back for some of their themes, but providing a
glance toward the future tale.
Richard Freeman, in his study of the precursors of Universal Studios 1932
production of The Mummy, reckons that there were ―over forty films with an Egyptian
theme‖ before the Universal film was made (par. 8). Of this number, by my own count,
nearly half were mummy pictures produced before 1914. These stories were of various
kinds. Freeman divides them into four areas, according to their ―storylines‖: films in
which curses—―on either defilers of tombs or on artefacts removed from tombs‖ played a
major role; stories in which ―Fluids/elixirs‖ were ―used to bring mummies back to life;‖
stories in which the plot features ―[r]eviving mummies—usually females,‖ who are
brought back to life ―either by use of a fluid or by electricity;‖ and tales in which
―[r]eincarnation‖ plays a major role as ―revived mummies find their former lovers
reincarnated in modern people‖ (par. 9). These stories might also be designated by the
nature of their stories, whether they are comic, dramatic, romantic, or some mixture. Of
those films produced in the earliest years of mummy fiction up to the beginning of the
First World War, several may be confidently classified as a result either personal
observation or because of the information provided by reliable scholars interested in the
subject. There are, however, several films, whose names have been recorded but about
which very little is known. Out of a list of a little more than twenty films, nearly half
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cannot be classified. Of those films which can be classified, a judgment based either on
critical comment, my viewing of the film, or sufficient data given in the descriptions, four
might be denominated trick films, twelve comedies, and the remainder dramas, only a
couple of which would meet our expectations of a horror film. Horror might well be
represented in those tales I have classified as ―unknowns,‖ but sufficient data were
simply not available. An additional horror tale might be added to the numbers if we
include the horror elements of one of the films which I have included in the trick film
category, Georges Méliès‘s tale of Cléopâtre. Romance plays a major role in these films
as well. The dramatic films are more often than not serious love stories, and the
comedies often have a romantic element to them. Those stories classified as an unknown
type are difficult to pin down. Often the information given about their plots tells us little
more than the fact that a mummy has been revived or that a piece of jewelry has been
found that its owner cannot dispose of—a situation that might either be comic or horrific,
depending upon the filmmaker‘s attitude toward the subject.
The earliest years of the mummy film, like the earliest years of film in general,
were a time when filmmakers were often more interested in the capabilities of the new
medium than in storytelling. The earliest films might well be films recording the arrival
of a train at a station or quitting time at a local factory (Kobel 1; 14-15). Edison
employees recorded numerous sorts of unusual events—a sneeze, a kiss, two men
dancing to the sound (yes, sound) of a violin playing (Kobel 13; ―Dickson Experimental
Sound Film‖ n.p.). This amazement in the sheer capability of film made its way in
mummy films as well. A couple of examples make clear the sort of thing these films did.
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In one film, Méliès‘s 1899 film of Cléopâtre, a man, played by Méliès, chops up the
mummy of a queen in an ―Egyptian tomb‖ (Internet Movie Database n.p.). The
motivation behind this act is not clear from critical description; it is a fact, almost as in a
dream. The technological trick is the point of the film; the man ―chops the mummy of a
queen into pieces, and then, produces a woman from a smoking brazier‖ (Joshi Icons
389). Méliès‘s interest in the magical possibilities of film, not narrative, is the guiding
principle. Walter R. Booth‘s short film, The Haunted Curiosity Shop, thought to have
been produced in 1901 though the date is uncertain, is similarly guided by the desire to
create a film of magical effects (Gifford 18). The film opens with the curio dealer in
front of a cabinet. A head of some sort, placed upon a table, is the first of the wonders
the film produces, as it rises up in the air, and dances about. It is then transformed into
the torso of a woman, who hangs in mid-air without a bottom half. Her lower half,
seconds later, comes walking toward her upper half and joins it, whereupon she dances
and is almost immediately turned into an old hag. The curio dealer places her into the
cabinet. Seconds later, the first woman reappears through the walls of the cabinet, ghostlike. The curio dealer chases her back in and she disappears. Immediately thereafter, we
see first a mummy‘s sarcophagus, replaced quickly by a man in ancient Egyptian garb
who bows to the curio dealer. He then morphs into a skeleton and is immediately
replaced by a knight in armor. The curio dealer then takes the knight‘s armor from him
and places it in a large urn. Magic of some sort works and the curio dealer pulls out what
appears to be a brownie of some sort—a dwarfish-looking figure with pointed hat and
beard, though obviously played by a child. Two more figures are then pulled out and the
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three brownies dance about the urn. The old curio dealer then places the brownies back
into the urn and they disappear. Smoke rises from the urn and the film ends. The
mummy in this film, as in the Méliès production, is merely a prop for special effects, a
fact which we shall see repeated in some of the comic films to follow.
Comic films were an especially popular type of mummy picture during the years
leading up to the First World War. The most popular story types in these films were plots
that revolved around the idea of fooling a professor of Egyptology, whether for purposes
of financial gain alone or to secure a reluctant professor‘s permission to marry his
daughter—or a combination of the two. Each of the stories of this type has as its basis an
impersonation of a mummy by a living human being which is then sold to a naïve
professor. The Cricks and Martin production of Wanted—A Mummy (1910) is a story
where the motivation is based strictly on financial gain; Pathé‘s The Mummy (1911) and
Kalem‘s The Egyptian Mummy (1913) are tales of suitors using mummy impersonation
as part of a plan to secure paternal permission to marry. Vitagraph‘s 1914 film, titled The
Egyptian Mummy just as Kalem‘s film had been, is a tale combining motivations since
the father‘s objection to marriage can only be overcome as a result of the suitor‘s
financial gain. Comic stories were also based on tales involving real mummies, whether
dead or alive. Pathé‘s La Momie (1908)—also known as Automatische Chauffeur or, in
English translation as The Mummy—tells the story of the comic results, mostly slapstick,
of a professor‘s buying and bringing home a real mummy. A resurrected mummy, this
one female with ―decidedly romantic inclinations,‖ provides the comedy in Thanhauser‘s
1911 production of The Mummy. In this story it is female jealousy that is cause for mirth
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as the risen mummy does an ―‗Oriental dance‘ to seduce (and ultimately marry) her
owner, a New York science professor and amateur Egyptologist‘‖ (American University
n.p.). Two other comedies from the pre-war period round out the catalogue: Kalem‘s
The Mummy and the Cowpuncher (1912) and Crystal Film‘s Oh! You Mummy (1914).
Very little is known about either of these films. The Kalem production, according to
Hans van den Berg, creator of The Ancient Egypt Film Site, notes only that it is an
―early western movie [that] is said to feature an Egyptian mummy,‖ but admits that the
information ―could as yet not be verified‖ (n.p.). Of the Crystal Films production even
less is known, though standard information about actors, director, production company,
country of origin, and year of film are given in Van den Berg‘s catalogue. Nothing,
however, is known of the comic elements of the film except for its title. Such difficulties
are part of the challenge of early film research.
Serious romantic tales are also a part of early silent mummy movies. Though
most of the romantic tales in these films can be found in the comedies, serious romantic
tales of the period before the Great War include three versions of Théophile Gautier‘s
The Romance of the Mummy as well as an original tale for the screen, Essanay‘s When
Soul Meets Soul, each of which treats the theme of reincarnation. The films based on the
Gautier novel tell the story of a Lord Evandale who falls asleep while in the tomb of an
ancient Egyptian queen and dreams that he has known her during her lifetime. He
awakens to see a young woman who looks exactly like the queen (Van den Berg n.p.).
The Essanay production, When Soul Meets Soul, is a similar sort of tale that makes
much of the idea of reincarnation. In this tale, an elderly Egyptologist is given a ancient
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Egyptian mummy, whom he discovers, in a dream, to have been a lover he had jilted in a
former life. On learning this, the professor breaks down in grief, giving his former lover
the justice for which she had longed.
Horror makes up the final category of the silent mummy film. Two films, The
Vengeance of Egypt and The Curse of the Scarabee Ruby seem safe bets for the horror
category. The first of these two films is undoubtedly a horror flick as it focuses,
according to the screenplay located at the Library of Congress, on the deaths caused by a
cursed ring stolen by a soldier of Napoleon. The second film, since it tells the story of an
evil spirit which transforms into a girl, seems a likely candidate as well. Other films,
however, might be added. Méliès‘s trick film, Cléopâtre, might be considered a horror
film in that it involves the chopping up of a body, though, undoubtedly the principal
concern of the filmmaker was showing off the technology. Another film, this one again
by Méliès‘s company, Star Film, seems undoubtedly horrific as it depicts grotesque
scenes in which a man‘s dead wife is resurrected, but, despite its having been classified
as a mummy film, does not clearly involve a mummy (American University n.p.). Two
other unknowns might be classified either as comic or horrific, depending on how the
filmmakers approached it. Edison‘s The Egyptian Mystery (1909) revolves around the
idea of a pendant that gives it possessors the power to make things disappear. This
sounds like a good candidate for a trick or comic film, but horror might result if properly
handled. Naidra, the Dream Woman could work as comedy or horror as well since it is
about a necklace that is stolen that cannot be disposed of—the attitude taken toward this
situation would make all the difference in the world.
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The remaining stories filmed up to the First World War are impossible to account
for any further. Critical comment tells us little more in many instances than that a
mummy comes to life. S. T. Joshi, for instance, tells us only that La Momie du Roi (aka
The Mummy of King Ramses) (1909) ―[a] mummy is brought to life by a professor,‖ but
this is more information than is provided on several films on which no critical comment
has provided any indication of the plot. Stories such as these are gaps to be filled in, but
they must be considered when making statements about the nature of silent film in
general. Only additional research will be able to fill in the gaps, and even that is not
certain. In doing research in this area, the vicissitudes of time and attitudes toward the
films must be considered. As pieces critically regarded as fluff for the most part, it is
unlikely that great pains will have been taken to protect them. The problem of decay of
film only makes the preservation more difficult (Usai 19).
These films that I have described here make up the mummy film as it was
constructed before the First World War. They were both similar to and different from
what came before them and what followed, and they dealt with some of the same
concerns that were considered in print fiction of the same period and before: fears of
invasion and concerns about gender, expertise, and matters of skepticism and belief.
Because they were short films, averaging from little more than a minute or two to about
twenty minutes, and limited in verbal communication, they were restricted in the kinds of
things they could do, but out of those limitations they forged a new kind of mummy
fiction, one combining amenable traditions of the past to fresh thinking in a new medium.
The themes of the stories in print—love, horror, comedy, reincarnation—continue to play
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a role here, but the demands of the medium lead to new emphases in the early days of
silent film as filmmakers alternately use the magic of the medium to transport viewers to
ancient Egypt via special effects or concentrate instead on the comedy of skepticism.
Print fiction‘s concern with expertise is one of the many themes that is treated in
the silent mummy movies, but the way it is presented varies according to the attitude
taken by the filmmaker. The dramatic productions of the stories treat experts with
respect. It is the nameless ―Egyptian scholar‖ in The Vengeance of Egypt (1912) , for
instance, who ―traces [the] origin of the [cursed] ring‖ and puts an end to the ring‘s
deadly work when he returns the ring to its owner. Only he has the knowledge required
to bring an end to the reign of death. He is given great respect by the fisherman who
finds the ring after it had been lost by its former owners when they perished in an
automobile accident. The simple fisherman knows the scholar will know what to do and
gives the ring to him for this reason. The script does not indicate the body language of
the fisherman or the scholar as the exchange takes place, but one can well imagine that
the fisherman does not come in arrogance, but in humility, when he places the ring in the
scholar‘s hands and the obvious comment of the latter‘s superior knowledge and
judgment, treating the scholar as a child might treat his father.
Much more is known about the expert in Essanay‘s production of the same year,
When Soul Meets Soul, a film I was able to view in the Motion Picture and Television
Reading Room at the Library of Congress. As an older man, the expert, Delaplace,
presents the marks of age and wisdom. He is dressed respectably in dark pants, coat and
tie and wears glasses, making him look not only older, as one might expect, but more
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intelligent. His is not a virile image; instead, his power is mental. The fact that he has an
assistant to help him examine the mummy case only adds to his stature. The film
ultimately proves the fragility of the expert‘s morality as it depicts him in a former life in
ancient Egypt jilting a beautiful princess with whom he had been in love, but the modern
day expert, despite this, is never seen as anything other than a man to be respected. He is
no despised object of humor, but a man of great learning. We do not know if, like the
clergy, as David Knight remarks, Delaplace is given only ―exiguous‖ funds for his work,
but we can infer that his social position, again like the clergy‘s, is respectable (Science
and Spirituality 152). All of this, of course, has to be inferred from the little hints that the
film supplies, which, undoubtedly relies on viewers‘ imaginations and a shared culture.
The film does not offer any explicit comment.
The attitude toward experts and expertise is radically different, however, in the
comedies, a fact that need not be surprising given that the make-up of early cinema
audience was largely working class in both Britain and the United States (Bowser 1;
Kuhn 112). In these films the expert is regarded as a fool full of book-learning but with
no commonsense. The expert is given full credit for his expertise in these films, but that
expertise, rather than being valued is laughed at for its foolishness. The fool-theprofessor variety of the mummy film is full of examples of this derision as in case after
case the professor is shown to be naïve and the practical inferior of the less educated men
and women who deceive him. The Cricks and Martin production, Wanted—A Mummy,
for example, shows that expertise is no match for the native wit of two bums when they
fool-the-professor into believing that a man dressed as a mummy is the genuine article.
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The young couple wishing to overcome the fatherly objection of the professor to the
marriage of his daughter to the young man she loves in Kalem‘s The Egyptian Mummy
also relies on the construction of expertise as the absence of commonsense. In this story,
the professor‘s daughter and her young man are able to convince the professor that a
mummy he has recently purchased has come to life and commanded him to allow his
daughter to marry the man she desires. The same naiveté is evident in another fool-theprofessor plot, this time in Vitagraph‘s identically named The Egyptian Mummy. The
plot in this film, like many another of this variety, revolves around a young man‘s desire
to marry the daughter of a professor. When he is refused on grounds of insufficient
income, the young man happens upon the wonderful idea of supplying his beloved‘s
father with a fraudulent mummy played by a bum he sees outside his window. He feeds
him and gives him liquor and puts him, drunk, in the bandages of a mummy and delivers
him to the professor. The bum masquerading as the mummy then begins to wake up, but
the professor is oblivious to the former‘s actions until he attacks him. Comic action then
ensues. Though it appears that the professor believes that he has been duped and that the
man attacking him is no mummy but a fraud, it is clear that the professor believes in the
possibility of resurrecting a mummy, since he has apparently purchased this mummy for
the purpose of trying to resurrect it with the elixir of life which he has been developing in
his laboratory. Such a character might well be taken seriously in a tale of horror, but as
constructed in this story, it is nothing more than foolishness, an opinion, by film‘s end,
that the professor shares, as is evident when he throws out all of his books on the subject.
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Commonsense, as represented in the person of the young suitor, wins the day and the
daughter.
The negative view of expertise in this and the other fool-the-professor films is
undoubtedly a result of a common attitude prevalent in the countries (Great Britain and
the U.S.) where the films were produced.56 British Victorian author Charles Kingsley
expresses this attitude well when he contrasts the ―knowledge which you get by
observation‖—the only kind which he believes is of real value—with knowledge gained
by books:
Many a man is learned in books, and has read for years and years, and yet
he is useless. He knows about all sorts of things, but he can‘t do them.
When you set him to work, he makes a mess of it. He is what is called a
pedant because he has not used his eyes and ears. He has lived in books.
He knows nothing of the world about him or of men and their ways, and
therefore he is left behind in the race of life by a shrewd fellow who is not
half as book-learned as he but who is a shrewd fellow—who keeps his
eyes open—who is always picking up new facts, and turning them to some
particular use. (qtd. in Houghton 297)
The experts in these films are those ―learned in books‖; the bums and suitors, the ―shrewd
fellow‖ who can put information ―to some particular use‖ (297). This attitude is
undoubtedly a part of a more general anxiety about culture becoming increasingly
56
This negative view of expertise, of course, is only half of the story. Dramatic films treat the expert with
much more respect. Undoubtedly, there was a conflict of opinion on expertise as these different sorts of
stories demonstrate.
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mediated by media and by experts. In such a culture, it is easy for the common man or
woman to begin to feel powerless as expertise seems to be increasingly required to
interpret the events of our lives. Though experts in this period are respected and shown
to be so in many of the print and film narratives of mummy fiction, there seems to be an
alternative view of expertise as well, as is here expressed. Claims for commonsense are
part of a move to fetishize ―first-hand knowledge‖ in a world increasingly dependent
upon expertise. The comic films play out this philosophical viewpoint as they portray the
common man and woman as the superior of the book-learned expert. The two bums in
Wanted—A Mummy, for instance, turn their knowledge of a professor‘s desire for a
mummy into cash and the suitor in Kalem‘s production of The English Mummy into the
prize he most cherishes, the professor‘s daughter. The young man in the Vitagraph
production of The English Mummy the following year does even better as he proves
himself the ultimate practical man as he takes his wit and little to no funds at all and turns
them into a fortune as he invests what he has received for his deceptive sale to the
professor in the stock market, in this way gaining not only great wealth, but the woman
he desires when the professor‘s objections to his lack of money are overcome. The man
who can take what he has learned and put it to good, practical use is the superior man.
Expertise alone is not valuable. The learned man, if his learning has no practical
outcome, these comedies seem to suggest, is worthless and is a fit subject for ridicule.
Portraying expertise in this way democratically lifts the non-expert into a position of
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respect while at the same time denigrating expertise. The contrast with the print
narratives could not be greater.57
Matters related to gender and sexuality also continue to be important themes in
silent film‘s depictions of mummy stories, though in these tales there is no love story
between a resurrected mummy and an archaeologist. The closest we get to such a
relationship, in fact, is in the various versions of Le Roman de la Momie and When Soul
Meets Soul, where a love story between a modern Egyptologist and a mummy is
developed by implying a relationship in a former incarnation as the modern day lovers
dream of ancient affections.58 In most cases, however, love relationships in silent films
are based on the here and now as lovers use mummies as means of achieving their
matrimonial ends. Though there is at least one case of a sexually desirable female
mummy—Thanhauser‘s 1911 production of The Mummy, where ―[a]n ancient Egyptian
princess‖ brought back to life ―[seduces]‖ the man who possesses her—most sexually
desirable females in the films are modern women under the paternal authority of their
professorial fathers. Paternal authority in these stories, however, is overturned as young
women, in league with their suitors, defy their fathers and dupe them into giving their
previously denied permission to marry through duplicitous use of mummies as we have
57
This statement should not be taken to mean, however, that there are no examples of practical men pitted
against experts in the print narratives, for such is not the case. In ―The Story of Baelbrow,‖ for instance,
the practical man of business, Harold Swaffam, is pitted against the occult expertise of Flaxman Low. In
this story, however, it is the expert who comes out ahead and the practical man of business who is
converted to the expert‘s way of thinking, thereby demonstrating the superiority of expert knowledge.
58
Le Roman de la Momie, a SCAG-Pathé production, came out first came out in 1910 and was later
distributed to Italian audiences in 1911 as Romanzo Della Mummia. Urban, in 1911, produced a film
known simply as The Mummy, which Stephen Jones argues was ―probably a remake of The Romance of
the Mummy (1910).
217
seen. The failure of parental authority of which Eliza Lynn Linton complained in 1868 in
―The Girl of the Period‖ is fully evident here. The women Linton called to task for their
lack of ―respect‖ for their parents have nothing over the modern heroine of the silent
mummy pictures (par. 2). They treat their fathers as doddering old fools as they conspire
with their suitors to manipulate them into doing as they wish. Their young lovers,
however, they treat with respect, giving the respect once owed their fathers to the men
they love; and though they obviously submit to their lovers in these films, they are
portrayed as young, independent women who are too liberated to endure the restrictions
of ―Victorian family life‖ which often resulted in feminine servitude of spinster daughter
to their fathers (Jalland 166). They are, on the contrary, not only willing to deceive their
fathers to get their way, but even giddy, as the little dance that the daughter in Kalem‘s
Egyptian Mummy indicates. No doubt contrary attitudes could be found in other films,
but this attitude, part and parcel of the fooling the professor type of stories, is
undoubtedly part of the impulse that some theories see as comedy‘s ―largely nonsocializing, anarchic, irrational‖ ―impulse‖ (Henkle 200). The young women in these
comic films are simply acting on the new ideas about women‘s rights and independence.
They are the advanced women of their era, acting on the newly acquired independence
women were asserting for themselves at this time.
Sexuality in the films is not surprisingly muted. Despite the transgressions of
propriety that were a part of early film history, as films meant for the general public,
mummy tales were quite respectable. Titillation in expressions of ―Oriental sexuality,‖ as
in Thanhauser‘s 1911 production of The Mummy were about as far as filmmakers
218
allowed themselves to go.59 Instead, sexuality is expressed in the implied relationship
between courting couples who exchange meaningful glances. Attractive actors and
actresses help the implication of sexuality along. The same could be said of silent film
audiences who do not want explicit sexual scenes, only the idea of sexual attraction.
Anything more would be unconscionable. In this way they are very much in keeping
with the sexuality of the print narratives where sexual attraction is hinted at in the
relationships where desire is placed in acceptable societal forms—mostly in impending
marriages, though, as in the case of The Mummy and Miss Nitocris, in a relationship
where the respectable form of marriage is denied, rendering, in the cultural norms of the
book, the impossibility of marriage until the father‘s objections can be overcome, a
situation identical to the problems of many of the fooling the professor plots. Yet even in
the serious romantic dramas in mummy films, sex is all anticipation and/or suggestion.
The lovers in When Soul Meets Soul are seen exchanging glances in voluptuous
surroundings where a Nubian slave fans the loving couple. The princess, Charazel, in the
early moments of the picture, furthermore is seen in various acts of sensuality: weaving
garlands of flowers while surrounded by her beautiful servant girls, embracing her lover
in her private quarters, all other sent away except for her ever-present Nubian servant
who fans the couple. Costuming further enhances the sexuality of the scenes, a visual
technique that expands upon print narrative‘s sometimes erotic descriptions of desirable
female mummies. In the opening scene of Delaplace‘s dream where he goes back to
ancient Egypt, we see Charazel in attractive feminine garb with a garland of flowers on
59
For an in depth discussion of attitudes about the Orient and sexuality, see Edward Said‘s Orientalism.
219
her head. Her lover, played by ―[s]ilent heartthrob Francis X. Bushman,‖ whom we learn
in the closing scene of the film to have been an earlier incarnation of Delaplace, is
depicted in costuming that reveals a raw masculine virility as he comes into the princess‘s
private quarters, dressed in a short tunic, an arm bracelet on each arm, his savage strength
expressed in his long hair bound in a headband with vast amounts of skin showing (Joshi
Icons 390). The meaningful glances and embraces complete the implied sexual desire.
The picture is kept clean, but the sexual desire is clearly communicated through the
film‘s setting, costuming, and actions.
―Reincarnation,‖ one of mummy fiction‘s most characteristic themes and the idea
of ―[doubling]‖ resulting from it also play a role in the silent films (Deane 402). Bradley
Deane suggests the interest in reincarnation in the print narratives is the result of mummy
fiction‘s ―fascinat[ion]‖ with ―reincarnation‘s immunity to historical change‖ as it
―disrupts the advance of time,‖ and in so doing, I would argue, puts an end to horror of a
world descending into ―decline and degeneracy‖ (402) . This interest in reincarnation
can be applied to the films as well. Certainly it plays a role in silent film in stories like
When Soul Meets Soul and in Le Roman de la Momie, but it is not nearly as
characteristic an element of the tale as Deane suggests. This state of affairs can
undoubtedly be accounted for by the nature of the stories that interested silent
filmmakers. Comic films‘ treatment of these stories did not take the idea of resurrected
mummies seriously, but concentrated instead on the mileage to be gained from slapstick
comedy that could be easily communicate, all the while enhancing the idea of modern
day practicality and commonsense of the average man or woman. Those stories that
220
treated the theme of mummy resurrection seriously were often satisfied, if one is to judge
by critical descriptions of the stories, with the mere fact of the resurrection. Only three
films that I have been able to locate, the two romantic dramas mentioned above and ,
surprisingly, a fool-the-professor comedy produced by Pathé known simply as The
Mummy (1911), where a ―professor‘s assistant pretends to be a reincarnated mummy as
part of a plan to marry the professor‘s daughter‖ treat the theme at all. Lack of interest,
comic intentions, or lack of available footage to create a more involved mummy narrative
may play a role here in the scant attention paid to this characteristic of much mummy
fiction. Only additional research can serve to prove whether other silent mummy movies
used reincarnation more than brief critical summations of the film suggest.
Critical interest in matters pertaining to empire and fears of invasion or reverse
colonization are found primarily in the horror films, where the feared invasion takes place
by proxy in those stories where it is a piece of jewelry that does the invading or in stories
where it is an evil spirit that does so. Of the latter of these two films, The Curse of the
Scarabee Ruby, denominated a mummy film by a now unfortunately defunct site at the
American University at Cairo, little can be said. It would appear, based on the title and
the brief description of the film that tells us only that ―an evil spirit transforms into a
young girl,‖ that the feared invasion takes place in a manner that is somehow connected
with the scarabee ruby (n.p.). If so, this would make the film quite similar to The
Vengeance of Egypt, of which much more can be said. In this film, the theme of reverse
colonization is made abundantly clear as an invading Napoleonic soldier in Egypt steals a
ring that had once belonged to a mummy. Because of the curse on the ring, those who
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possess it (with one or two unexplained exceptions) die. In this way, the ring, a
representative of an earlier, more powerful but now defeated Egypt, invades the invader
as it visits death on its illegitimate possessors. This is commodity run amok, as, in Daly‘s
terms, the object becomes subject and‖ take[s] on a life of [its] own‖ (35). There is no
mummy here walking about, but the story is based on the related theme of the mummy‘s
curse, an idea dealt with to some degree in earlier print narratives, but probably known
most readily to those of us today with an interest in the subject as a result of newspaper
reports after the discovery of Tutankhamen in the 1920s.60 Universal Studios production
in 1932 of The Mummy, produced only a few short years after the Tutankhamen
discovery in 1923, made much of the curse theme and later Universal pictures followed
suit in a series of films produced in the next decade. These films, The Mummy‘s Hand
(1940), The Mummy‘s Tomb (1942), The Mummy‘s Ghost (1943), and The Mummy‘s
Curse (1944) develop the idea of the curse along with many of the other features that we
expect in mummy fiction, but they are a development that took years to arrive at
following the silent era. Before the 1932 production of The Mummy, only The Wraith of
the Tomb (1915), a story ―in which the ghost of an Egyptian princess searches London
60
Of particular interest in this regard is the response of two writers both interested in the occult and ancient
Egypt. Marie Corelli, said to be one of Queen Victoria‘s favorite writers and an author of Egyptian tales,
though none dealing particularly with mummies, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of two influential
mummy narratives, ―The Ring of Thoth‖ and ―Lot No. 249,‖ on which, according to some critical opinion,
the 1932 Universal Studios production of The Mummy was based, were both convinced of the reality of
such curses. Corelli, in a letter to the New York Times, ―which was also reprinted by the London
newspapers,‖ wrote shortly before the death of Lord Carnavon, the first of the supposed curse‘s victims, ―I
cannot but think some risks are run by breaking into the last rest of a king in Egypt [Tut]] whose tomb is
specially and solemnly guarded, and robbing him of his possessions. According to a rare book I possess . .
. entitled The Egyptian History of the Pyramids [an ancient Arabic text], the most dire punishment follows
any rash intruder into a sealed tomb‖ (Stephens 12). Doyle, shortly after Carnavon‘s death, was asked by
―a reporter for the London Times . . . what he thought of this. Doyle,‖ according to Stephens‘s account,
declared himself ―very impressed‖ and said ―that he believed the pharaoh was responsible‖ l12).
222
for her murderous, severed mummified hand,‖ would qualify as unambiguously fitting in
the horror genre, though there are elements of terror in the 1918 German production of
Die Augen der Mumie Ma (The Eyes of the Mummy), though Joshi denies it
classification as a horror film (Icons 390).61 The earlier tale found in Vengeance is
simply an earlier version of an invading fiction where colonized others exact their
retribution on their invaders. The presence of the Napoleonic soldier‘s participation in
the invasion of Egypt only makes this connection more clear.
It is difficult to say how effective the film is. The screenplay or scenario is quite
limited in its descriptions of the nearly forty scenes in the movie. The description of the
first scene simply notes that ―Napoleon with scholars have arrived in Egypt with his
French army and are viewing a mummy of the time of Rameses‖ and the first death
described in the film, scene 2, reel 2, simply notes that ―the girl is strangled by a burglar‖
(1). Scene after scene thereafter traces the progress of the ring as it passes from owner to
owner and death to death. Reading the script, it is difficult to see how the narrative
interest is maintained. The same thing happens over and over and no viewer can escape
its message, but one wonders how effective it might have been. It is possible that
cinematic approach may have made the picture extraordinarily interesting, but someone
who has actually been able to view the film would have to make this judgment, though as
far as I have been able to ascertain, no one has. Certainly, though, the thinking of the
61
Joshi also judges Wraith to be ―[p]robably the first full-length horror feature produced in Britain. Josh‘s
judgment may well be true with regard to the nation of origin, but not in terms of films available to
English-speaking viewers since The Vengeance of Egypt, as a three-reel film would qualify as a full-length
film.
223
time among those who wrote films, was the idea that film plots should be kept simple.
Eustace Hale Ball, the pioneer scenarist and author of The Art of the Photoplay, advised
would-be film writers against more complex plots, arguing that only a single ―line of
action‖ could be done well in the eighteen minutes available in a one-reel film (36). As
a result, sub-plots, which would make for greater narrative interest, would be out. Thus
what to us from an early twenty-first century viewpoint may seem like repetitive writing
may well have been to contemporary filmmakers and spectators the height of craft. As
the years passed and films became longer, of course, the films could become more
complex as more verbal information could be communicated in additional intertitles.
Without additional film footage, however, scenarists were restricted to less complex
plots. All of which makes the full-length Vengeance more of a mystery since much more
could be accomplished in three times as many reels. The redundancy of the plot may
simply have been the result of thinking that applied to shorter films and the screen writer
simply may not have adjusted. The film, nevertheless, I would argue is important as it
provides us with an early example of the horror film.
The Egyptian invasion by jewelry as we have it in this film is carried on in other
films as well, though some of these we can only suspect of fulfilling this expectation by
reason of their title and some, and these more fully and in keeping with the earlier print
examples of invasion, come at the beginning of the Great War and some in the thirties
and after. The later films especially make clear the idea of invasion as walking
mummies come to the western world and invade our space much as they do, as Stephen
Arata argues, in Dracula (623). In these films fears about invasion and concerns about
224
masculinity are quite clear, as, for example, when the mummy in the Universal Studios
production of The Mummy, Ardeth Bey, begins his murderous attack on those who
oppose him. The same idea can be seen numerous times in the Universal mummy
pictures of the forties when marauding mummies go on murderous rampages as they are
guided by evil priests who direct their every move, much in the same way as Edward
Bellingham directs the movement of his mummy in Doyle‘s ―Lot No. 249.‖ The silent
pictures are not formulated in this way. Murders occur, as in Vengeance, but no guiding
intelligence outside the curse itself directs the murders. There is no move toward
detection in the horror stories to discover the culprit either until the end of the film, when
the expert, a sort of abbreviated occult detective, steps in to the picture and saves the day.
There is, however, some concern in these stories with the idea of skepticism and belief,
though the treatment of these issues varies according to the epistemological stance of the
filmmaker. Dramatic and horror films accept occult reality and treat experts learned in
the arcana of the occult with respect; the comedies, however, take an entirely different
approach, eschewing the supernatural and elevating the commonsensical layperson above
the apparently foolish professorial types. In so doing, the comedies argue for a
materialist worldview. Serious treatments of the mummy narrative accept occult reality,
but comedy laughs at it. The comedies reassure the anxious breast that is troubled by the
horror film. The world, they say, is knowable and can be understood in its physical
manifestations alone. There is no longing these stories for another world; this one has
everything the young lovers in the films desire. And they prove their skeptical conviction
225
not in the shuddering manner of the unconvinced, but in gleeful asseverations as they plot
to deceive the foolish believing expert.
The silent mummy films serve as a bridge between the earlier print narratives and
the mummy films that follow. In them we can see early examples of many of the film
types that follow, including not only the horror film, but comic examples and films
focused on the eroticism of the form. The detective plot, originating in the early print
narratives, has only a minor presence in these stories, though it is well developed in the
Universal Studios productions of the thirties and forties. Silent filmmakers simply had
not adopted such concerns prior to the war as a major concern, quite possibly as a result
of the limitation of film footage and difficulty in communicating complex information
visually, though later silent filmmakers overcame many of these problems through liberal
use of verbal information communicated through intertitles and over-the-shoulder looks
at letters, newspapers, and other sorts of documents.
The silent films are interesting as they are a sort of new beginning in telling the
mummy story. They tell many of the same sort of stories that the print narratives had
told, but they do so under the constraints of the technology of film. They still manage to
communicate many of the same concerns of mummy fiction in general, but they do it
almost as if one hand were tied behind their back. Because of this handicap, filmmakers
had to choose both the kind of story that could be told visually as well as a tale that
would be of interest to early spectators. In the beginning, as we have seen, spectacle is
sufficient, an idea not surprising since Aristotle had argued for its importance as one of
the six parts of tragedy (95). Later audiences demanded more, and narrative, as part of
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the demand, developed. The stories provided the same sort of service that the print
fiction did: they communicated cultural values and desires, dreams and fears, as they told
their tales. They made possible an exploration of issues of importance, of life, death,
love, and mystery and made us, if even only for a few moments, care.
The issues with which mummy fiction dealt were, of course, the issues that
concerned a great many fin de siècle Britons: would England be attacked by other
industrialized nations? Would the colonies rise up against her? Could the problem of
women agitating for social changes and threatening the traditional male‘s position be
managed? Might there yet be a way to have both the scientific and the spiritual worlds
without conflict? These and other questions were much on the minds of the turn-of-thecentury Briton, and mummy fiction took part in the discourse, adding its voice to that of
others.
As I have indicated throughout this study, fin de siècle mummy fiction is by and
large a conservative genre. There are elements of progressiveness in some stories, of
course, such as George Griffith‘s tale of The Romance of Golden Star, for example, but,
generally speaking, the authors of these tales were very much inclined to maintain the
status quo. Britain was to maintain its power as were men; and women, like the nation‘s
colonized territories, were to be subservient and grateful. There were, of course, as we
have seen, instances of apprehension about these areas, but the majority favored the
conservative position. Other thinkers approached the topic differently, voicing their
concerns and opinions via speeches, cartoons, and non-fictional approaches to political
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discourse as we have seen in preceding chapters--but writers of mummy fiction entered
into this world of discourse through their stories of mummies.
It is easy to imagine a reader at this point, of course, wondering why a writer
might choose to communicate his or her ideas about social and political concerns through
mummy fiction. Answering such a reader, one would have to consider the purposes of
fiction and what might be gained by entering into such discourse through mummy fiction.
Undoubtedly, of course, some authors of fiction do not pick up their pens with any
purpose other than spinning a good yarn, and this, I would argue, is a perfectly legitimate
reason for setting out to write a story. Other writers have particular agendas they want to
forward; history is full of examples of fiction of this type. Without authorial expression
of intent, however, it is impossible to tell the reason that a particular writer wrote a story,
though, of course, readers can judge the evidence of the author‘s writing to decide what,
if any, particular agenda might be driving a writer to express the ideas that he or she does.
Nevertheless, even in those cases where writers are simply trying to put together a
saleable story for commercial purposes, writers cannot escape the ideas of their times,
and they undoubtedly have opinions about the issues of their times which may peek out
from the chinks in the story. Thus, all stories, it would seem to me, can be looked at as
part of the discourse of their time since no author writes in a vacuum.
Therefore, it seems reasonable to believe that stories of all sorts, whether their
authors be judged as consciously attempting to score particular social or political points
or not, can be seen to be engaging in the dialogue of the time on the various issues of the
day. Thus, whether the author is consciously engaging in political discourse or not, he or
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she cannot escape such concerns entirely, even if they were to wish to do so. For this
reason, it is easy to see that such stories are a part of the socio-political discourse of their
times.
This much decided, however, we are still left with the question of the particular
advantages of fictional entries into such discourse and particularly with the advantage of
mummy fiction in such discussions. To answer the more general question first, I would
refer the reader to Marc Scott Zicree‘s statement about Rod Serling‘s use of science
fiction to discuss important issues of the day. According to Zicree, author of The
Twilight Zone Companion, Serling used science fiction as a way to talk about issues that
mattered to him without television censors getting in his way. Dick Berg, Zicree
continues, noted that science fiction was a good fit for Serling under these
circumstances, ― ‗particularly because he [Serling] had much on his mind politically and
in terms of social condition‖ (15). ― ‗[S]cience fiction . . . gave him as much flexibility in
developing those themes as he might had anywhere else at that time‘‖ (15).
Though the situation in fin de siècle Britain was not identical to this situation, I mention
Serling, nevertheless, because the use Serling made of science fiction is an indication of
the sort of thing that science fiction can do: it can take issues of the day, move them to a
strange world (or a world made strange) and comment on those ideas. Mummy fiction
does the same sort of thing: it takes issues of the day in a world made strange by the
intrusion of the occult in such a way as to provide writers of this fiction with a medium
through which to express their ideas. Thus, it is that writers like H. D. Everett can
comment on the position of women in late Victorian society in her novel about Iras and
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Ralph Lavenham, and H. Rider Haggard can explore the problem of the plundering of
Egyptian tombs in his story of ―Smith and the Pharaohs.‖
Because these stories are tales that are meant first and foremost to be entertaining
stories, they are able to make contact with audiences that might not otherwise be reached.
The narrative treat that fiction provides, that is, entices readers to look into the pages of
the short stories or books of mummy fiction and, on looking, get something more than
they might have expected—a treatment of socio-political issues of the day. Since the
concerns of the day are presented narratively, they are easier to take in than dry, nonfictional lectures might be. Thus it is that not only do the writers enter into the discourse
of such issues, but the readers of the fiction are able to participate through their
engagement with the fictional treatment of those issues. The stories that treat these issues
are thus a part of the circulating ideas of the time, as they both take ideas from the culture
and then influence that culture through the pages that readers peruse. Readers then can
potentially enter into the discourse of the time as they discuss the concerns that the stories
have raised. As part of this cycle of discourse exchange which I have just described here,
mummy fiction does something that is especially useful that not all other forms of fiction
do; that is, despite its basically conservative outlook, mummy fiction manages at the
same time to give voice to those most under-represented in British society of the fin de
siècle: those on the boundaries of society or on the lowest rungs of the social ladder—
members of the working class and women.
The fact that mummy fiction deals primarily with the supernatural is a factor in
giving voice to the society‘s under-represented members, though the fact of the
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involvement in the supernatural is not enough to give that group more of a voice than
other forms of fiction. It is mummy fiction‘s treatment of rationality and the occult that
makes the difference in how the lower classes and women are represented in this fiction.
The dominant male voice of the time, as we have seen, was the rational male voice.
Figures like Sherlock Holmes as he appears in The Hound of the Baskervilles
demonstrate how the rational man was expected to respond to occult phenomena.
Holmes, for the most part absent from the scenes which Dr. Watson narrates, is able by
the novel‘s end to demonstrate how what had appeared to be the haunting of the moors by
a spectral hound to be in fact the product of a Baskerville relation attempting to gain his
inheritance through scare tactics that appeared supernatural but were easily explainable in
natural, scientific terms once all the evidence had been gathered. Superstitious peasants
and their social ―betters‖ who had accepted the supernatural explanation were all proven
wrong by Holmes‘s masculine, rational mind. This was one sort of ghost story of the
time, one where the rational explanation wins out. The skeptic is proven right while the
believers must admit their error. In mummy fiction, however, it is the skeptic who is
often proven wrong; and it is in this changed state of affairs that the disenfranchised are
given their voices and heard by the larger society. Men, to be sure, are still dominant in
these stories, but servants and women, both placed in inferior positions in society, are
heard from in the mummy stories in cases where the common assumptions of male
rationality prove to be insufficient in understanding the world of the mummy tale. We
see examples of women and the lower classes being given greater (respectful) attention in
stories like ―The Story of Baelbrow‖ and The Mummy and Miss Nitocris, just to name
231
two. In the former tale, it is the servant class and women who are more aware of the truth
of the occultic events which take place in the story. The servants, except for one hardy
soul who loses her life for going against the judgment of her class, all have the good
sense to stay out of a portion of the house at Baelbrow because they know that something
wicked will harm them if they attempt to go through it. The servant who does brave the
evil presence of the mummy vampire that threatens them plays the role of the masculine
skeptic and loses her life in the process. The servants who stay away are the ones who
are correct in their judgment. Lena Jungvort, the only middle-class woman we see in the
story is similarly proven right in her judgment about the mummy vampire. When her
testimony conflicts with her father‘s, a learned professor and one well-respected, it is not
the professor but Lena who is shown to be correct in her assessment of the circumstances.
Both she and the servants are ultimately credited as correct by the male expert authority,
Flaxman Low, who, expert though he is , sides with the servants and Lena as he interprets
the events which have taken place at Baelbrow. Male authority is still very important,
but Low‘s siding with the disenfranchised groups raises them up to a position of
respectability as the educated male implicitly declares them correct when he solves the
case as being the result of the haunting of a mummy vampire.
Griffith‘s story of Niti Marmion also gives voice to the underclass as women are
described as rational, powerful creatures. Niti Marmion is not only an educated woman –
Griffith describes her as ―Miss Nitocris Marmion, Bachelor of Science, Licentiate of
Literature and Art, and Gold-Medallist in Higher Mathematics at the University of
London‖—but a powerful one thanks to the powers she has gained in the fourth
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dimension (n.p.). She plays a smaller role in the whole of the novel, but a crucial one as
it is she who is responsible for punishing Oscarovitch by the novel‘s conclusion when she
―allowed‖ him to die (n.p.) Griffith even includes among his women in the book an
―advanced‖ woman who appropriates male privilege and drives herself and Niti about
London in an automobile, Niti‘s American friend, Brenda van Huysman (Wintle 66).
The matter of giving women a voice in these stories, however, is not a result of
women with great power exercising that power. Typically what happens in these cases is
the woman is shown to be a dangerous being that must be controlled. Such cases do not
provide the voice to which I am referring. It is in those cases where women are treated
with respect, as human beings deserving a hearing. Niti, though she is partially
considered one of those dangerous women who must be controlled, is nevertheless
treated in the pages of the novel as someone to be listened to and acknowledged, as is
clear in her relationship with her father, Professor Marmion, with whom she has
important conversations that he takes quite seriously, as, for example, in the conversation
they have about the proper use of the professor‘s newly gained powers in attempting to
achieve world peace. Ruth Djama, similarly, is given full voice in another Griffith tale,
The Romance of Golden Star, as she first nurses and then educates the risen mummy
Vilcaroya about the proper way to conduct his affairs. Though she is largely depicted as
a traditional, submissive woman, Ruth has great power in this narrative; her opinions,
which she is not afraid to voice, are listened to and respected by the men around her.
The treatment of women that I have just described here would seem to make a
case for mummy fiction as a more progressive sort of narrative than might be imagined.
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Such a case could, to a limited extent, of course, be made. The disenfranchised are given
voice as women, servants, and even, as we have seen, the colonized, as in the case of
Vilcaroya in The Romance of Golden Star, are allowed to speak. Nevertheless, by and
large, the majority of the tales want to maintain the status quo, keeping servants, women,
and conquered territories in their place. The possibilities of these groups rising up and
claiming rights denied them were frightening and fictional treatments of these issues both
in and out of mummy fiction sought to deal with them. Sometimes, the stories seem to
indicate impending doom, as in those cases where England is overrun by disease brought
upon them by the powers of Pharos or by powerful women such as Queen Tera in The
Jewel of Seven Stars; yet, typically, by the conclusion of these stories, traditional order
has been restored.62 Men rule and women submit; the empire remains intact and servants
play their proper roles and thus, to the conservative mind, all is right with the world.
Nevertheless, if only for a moment, the oppressed have been given a voice, even if a
dreaded one, and allowed to speak.
62
The 1903 edition of Stoker‘s novel of Jewel is an exception. It was not until the 1912 edition that a more
palatable ending was provided.
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Appendix
The following table lists those tales which I have examined for the purposes of this study.
May of them are those listed by Nicholas Daly in his essay, ―That Obscure Object of
Desire: Victorian Commodity Culture and Fictions of the Mummy,‖ though some
included below are a result of my own research. I have listed them in chronological
order.
Author
Grant Allen
Doyle, Arthur Conan
Doyle, Arthur Conan
Everett, Mrs. H. D.
Griffith, George
Boothby, Guy
Hesketh-Prichard, Kate
and H. V. HeskethPrichard
Stoker, Bram
Griffith, George
Hyne, C. J. Cutcliffe
Griffith, George
Blackwood, Algernon
Pratt, Ambrose
Haggard, H. Rider
Stoker, Bram
Title
―My New Year‘s Eve Among
the Mummies‖
―The Ring of Thoth‖
―Lot No. 249‖
Iras, a Mystery
The Romance of Golden Star
Pharos, The Egyptian: A
Romance
―The Story of Baelbrow‖
Publisher
Belgravia Christmas Annual
Date
1878
Cornhill Magazine
Harper‘s Magazine
Blackwood
F. V. White
Windsor Magazine
1890
1892
1896
1897
1898
Pearson‘s Monthly Magazine
1898
The Jewel of Seven Stars
―The Lost Elixir‖
―The Mummy of ThompsonPratt‖
The Mummy and Miss
Nitocris: A Phantasy of the
Fourth Dimension
―The Nemesis of Fire‖
The Living Mummy
―Smith and the Pharaohs‖
The Jewel of Seven Stars,
second edition
Heinemann
Pall Mall Magazine
Macmillan
1903
1903
1904
T. Werner Laurie
1906
Eveleigh Nash
Ward, Lock
Strand Magazine
Heinemann
1908
1910
1912
1912
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